The hunchback considered my father through his narrow eyelids.
“It is a strange world,” he said.
“It is,” replied my father. “It is profoundly, inconceivably strange.”
There was a moment of silence. The two men regarded each other across the half-length of the room. The girl sat in the chair. She had got back her courage. The big, forceful presence of my father, like the shadow of a great rock, was there behind her. She had the fine courage of her blood, and, after the first cruel shock of this affair, she faced the tragedies that might lie within it calmly.
Shadows lay along the walls of the great room, along the gilt frames of the portraits, the empty fireplace, the rosewood furniture of ancient make and the oak floor. Only the hunchback was in the light, behind the four candles on the table.
“It was strange,” continued my father over the long pause, “that your father's will discovered at his death left his lands to you, and no acre to your brother David.”
“Not strange,” replied the hunchback, “when you consider what my brother David proved to be. My father knew him. What was hidden from us, what the world got no hint of, what the man was in the deep and secret places of his heart, my father knew. Was it strange, then, that he should leave the lands to me?”
“It was a will drawn by an old man in his senility, and under your control.”
“Under my care,” cried the hunchback. “I will plead guilty, if you like, to that. I honored my father. I was beside his bed with loving-kindness, while my brother went about the pleasures of his life.”
“But the testament,” said my father, “was in strange terms. It bequeathed the lands to you, with no mention of the personal property, as though these lands were all the estate your father had.”