"I am not tired," answered Sidney.
They walked away from the station toward the entrance of the Ampezzo Valley. Every step of the road was familiar to Sidney, for it was at Toblach he had waited for Sophy, when he had left her in a boyish passion so many years ago. The boy walking beside him was the very image of what he had been then. He glanced at him again and again, in the promise of his immature manhood, scarcely a man yet, but full of a force and vigor, both of mind and body, not yet tempered and solidified by the experience that later years would bring. Philip strode along with the sternness of a youthful judge. His heart was very hot within him. It was his father on whom he sat in judgment, or he would have poured out his wrath in uncontrolled vehemence. He did not know how to begin to speak to his father.
"Well, Philip," said his father, at last, when they were quite out of sight and hearing of their fellow-men.
They had wandered down to the margin of a little lake, in which the pale gray peaks were reflected faultlessly. The wind moaned sadly in the topmost branches of the fir trees surrounding them, and overhead a vulture was flying slowly from crest to crest, and uttered a wild, piercing cry as Sidney's voice broke the silence.
"Philip!" he repeated, looking imploringly into his son's face.
"Father," he said, "I have found out what became of Sophy Goldsmith."
They were simple words, and Sidney expected to hear them, yet they came like a deathblow from his son's lips. There was in Philip's voice so much grief and wonder, such contempt and indignation, that his father shrank from him as if he had given him physical pain. If his sin had but found him out in any other way than this! For Philip was dearer to him than all else—except, perhaps, Margaret. His love, and pride, and ambition, centered in his son. He had discovered how precious he was to him during that long journey to Venice, when the dread of his death had traveled with him. And now it was Philip who spoke in those unmerciful tones, whose stern face was turned away, as if he could not endure to look at him. The bitterness of the future would more than balance the prosperity of the past if his son was alienated from him.
"Philip," he said in hesitating words, "I loved her—just as you love Phyllis. I was as old as you. I could not give her up. And my uncle would never have consented. It was a boyish infatuation. I did not love her as I love your mother—my Margaret!" he cried with a sharp of pain in his voice; "but just as you love Phyllis, I loved Sophy, and I dared not run the risk of losing her. I cannot cut you off from your inheritance, let you marry as you please, but my uncle could have thrust me upon the world a penniless man."
"Do you think I could ever forsake Phyllis?" asked Philip with scorn.
"Not as you are; probably never," answered his father; "for she could never be so unfitted to be your daily companion as Sophy was to be mine. To be linked with a woman who is immeasurably your inferior is a worse fate than any words can tell. She was not like her father, or Rachel. She was vain and ignorant, vulgar and passionate. We had terrible scenes together before we parted; and I did not intend to forsake her. Listen, and I will tell you how it came about."