'Catherine, Catherine, for Heaven's sake desist from these appeals and arguments, which have no respect for my feelings, but which are totally useless!'
'It is those feelings to which I wish to appeal. They have slept too long; it is well for them to be roused!' cried the girl, clasping his arm with both her hands. 'You will feel remorse and sorrow all the years of your life, if Uncle Jack dies before you have made all the amends in your power!'
'Dies!'
The squire's face had become ashen; his repetition of the word Catherine had used betrayed the shock it had caused him.
'Dies!' he repeated. 'John is my junior. The chance is that I die before him.'
'No, uncle; for his life is threatened; it might end any minute, so the doctors tell him.'
There was silence in the library for a while, only the fire flickered and spluttered fiercely, and the heavy drops of a rain-storm dashed against the windows.
The squire stood erect, gazing straight before him, with not a change of one muscle of his face. Yet no one, least of all Catherine, could have seen that face without learning that a struggle and a grief were tearing his heart. While he was silent he was looking into the far past, to the childish days when Jack had been all-in-all to him, when his affection for him had been of the loyal protecting order of the elder for the younger; looking back to the youth of mutual aspirations after higher things than worldly ambition, to the confidences of young manhood, to the devotion for one woman, which had never separated them, because for each it had been equally hopeless. How Jack had proposed, after that sorrow, 'Let us keep together through life, you and I, Ross. We shall always understand and respect one another's memories'! How the promise had been kept, even when absence made letter-writing the only method of communication! How nothing but the elder's change of disposition had weakened the old tie! Money, money, money,—this had become Ross's idol; in serving it he had lost touch with the finer nature of his soldier brother, whose loyal, pure heart had remained faithful. Then the episode of Loring Carmichael's adoption; their mutual pride in the prospects of the clever lad who was to carry the old name honourably into another generation, and keep the home and estate in order. Then Loring's favouritism for Uncle Jack; the squire's growing jealousy, and attempt to purchase his allegiance secretly. Later, Loring's choice, Loring's departure; lastly, Loring's death, and the concealed letter!
No, not lastly, for years of estrangement had followed, beginning with a mere quarrel which could easily have been made up, but which had been sealed, as it were, by the squire's act of deception, that dishonouring wrong to which he would not own.
He saw himself in his true colours now, and was bitterly shamed by the vision.