"I know that," said Young Martin stoutly. "But it's Lavinia I want—not aught from him."
"He's in a very bad way indeed," remarked the elder man. "Very bad."
Young Martin made no reply. Old Martin took a long pull at the contents of his glass and sat down.
"I didn't know Sutton had children," he said absently.
"There's only Lavinia," said his nephew.
Lavinia! The reiteration of the name cut him like a knife: the sound of it sent him back nearly thirty years. Lavinia! And no doubt the girl would be like her mother.
"You're no doubt aware, my lad," he said, after another period of silence, during which his nephew sat watching him, "you're no doubt aware that me and the Suttons is anything but friends. They—the man and his wife—wronged me. Never mind how. They wronged me—cruel!"
Young Martin knew all about it, but he was not going to say that he did.
"That was not Lavinia's fault, uncle," he said softly. "Lavinia—she wouldn't wrong anybody."
Old Martin thought of the time when he had—faith in women. He sighed, and drinking off his toddy, rose heavily, as if some weight had been put on him.