“Yet he was not your father,” said Allan Roscoe, with sharp emphasis.
“So you say, Mr. Roscoe.”
“So my brother says in his letter to me.”
“Do you think it probable that, with all this affection for me, he would have left me penniless?” asked the boy.
“No; it was his intention to make a will. By that will he would no doubt have provided for you in a satisfactory manner. But I think my poor brother had a superstitious fear of will making, lest it might hasten death. At any rate, he omitted it till it was too late.”
“It was a cruel omission, if your story is a true one.”
“Your—my brother, did what he could to remedy matters. In his last sickness, when too weak to sign his name, he asked me, as the legal heir of his estate, to see that you were well provided for. He wished me to see your education finished, and I promised to do so. I could see that this promise relieved his mind. Of one thing you may be assured, Hector, he never lost his affection for you.”
“Thank Heaven for that!” murmured the boy, who had been deeply and devotedly attached to the man whom, all his life long, he had looked upon as his father.
“I can only add, Hector,” said Mr. Roscoe, “that I feel for your natural disappointment. It is, indeed, hard to be brought up to regard yourself as the heir of a great estate, and to make the discovery that you have been mistaken.”
“I don’t mind that so much, Mr. Roscoe,” said Hector, slowly. “It is the hardest thing to think of myself as having no claim upon one whom I have loved as a father—to think myself as a boy of unknown parentage. But,” he added, suddenly, “I have it only on your word. Why should I believe it?”