"Impossible!" said Sidney. "If he returns a rich man, some woman there will marry him, and his son will be no more fit to be an English gentleman than he is. If we could make him understand about the entail I could pay him to cut it off; but he could never know what it meant. No; he must not go back to Cortina."
"Let us take him down to Apley," suggested Philip.
"Would he be better off there?" asked his father. "He finds life here too civilized with all the moors to roam over. How would he feel where every acre of land is enclosed, and no trespassing allowed, and where life is so much more cramped by custom and conventionality? Do you think he could bear it? I say nothing about your mother and Dorothy, whose lives must be upset and spoiled by his presence; but would he be happier?"
"Look at him," said Philip, "how he is listening and watching us, as if he would tear the words out of our mouths. Martin," he added in Italian, "we are talking about you."
"Yes, yes!" he answered eagerly.
"What are we to do with you?" asked Philip.
"Send me back to Cortina," he replied.
"But we want you to live here," continued Philip; "we wish you to marry some good English girl, and bring up your sons to be like Hugh and me. This house and these lands will belong to your eldest son when you die; and he must be brought up like us, not like the farmers in Cortina."
"If I die, and if I have no son, who would the house belong to?" asked Martin reflectively.
They did not answer him. Martin's face was thoughtful and anxious, and he was evidently puzzling over this new idea. He looked from one to the other with an expression of wistful entreaty in his deep-set eyes, and a look of stronger intelligence than they had seen before dawned upon his face.