"What have I said?" Julian replied. And even as he did so, he again smoothed his father's hair while he stood beside him.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE STORY OF A CRIME
The disclosure was made, not among, perhaps, surroundings befitting the story that was told; not with darkness outside and in the house--with, in truth, no lurid environments whatever. Instead, the elderly man and the young one, the father and son, sat facing each other in the bright sunny room into which there streamed all the warmth and brilliancy of the late springtide, and into which, now and again, a humble-bee came droning or a butterfly fluttered. Also, between them was a table white with napery, sparkling with glass and silver, gay with fresh-cut flowers from the garden. It is amid such surroundings that, nowadays, we often enough listen to stories brimful with fate--stories baneful either to ourselves or others--hear of trouble that has fallen like a blight upon those we love, or learn that something has happened which is to change forever the whole current of our own lives.
It was thus that Julian Ritherdon listened to the narrative his father now commenced to unfold; thus amid such environment, and with a freshly-lit cigarette between his lips.
"You do not object to this?" he asked, pointing to the latter; "it will not disturb you?"
"I object to nothing that you do," Mr. Ritherdon replied. "In my day, I have, as you know, been a considerable smoker myself."
"Yes, in the days, your days, that I know of. But--forgive me for asking--only--is it to tell me of your earlier years, those with which I am not acquainted, that you summoned me here and bade me lose no time in coming to you?--those earlier days of which you have spoken so little in the past?"
"For that," replied the other slowly, "and other reasons. To hear things that will startle and disconcert you. Yet--yet--they have their bright side. You are the heir to a great----"
"My dear father!"