“No, sir.”
“You will not?”
“I will not.”
They sat gazing into each other’s eyes for several minutes; those two, so firm and unyielding, until Mr. Ellerton, unable longer to endure his son’s steadfast look, turned angrily away, and, in a voice hoarse with wrath, said:
“Go to your room, you ungrateful boy, and remain there until I decide your fate.”
Robert picked up his cap, which had fallen to the floor, and moved to the door. He opened it, and turning back, said, respectfully:
“Good-night, father.”
There was no reply, and he passed out, up the broad and handsome stairway, into his own room; where he sat in deep and earnest thought for several hours. At length, feeling tired and worn, he retired, and slept soundly until morning.
Poor Mr. Ellerton, down stairs, paced the room all night long. He was angry, but he was more, he was crushed.
It was, indeed, as Squire Moulton meant it should be, a heavy blow, not only to his pride, but to all his hopes and plans for his boy in the future. He intended to educate his boy in the most thorough manner, giving him every advantage and privilege that money could procure, and he had hoped to see him contract a brilliant marriage in the future. Those plans were now crushed in a single day—were blighted, never to revive again, and—“by a nobody,” he said, bitterly, to himself; and he cursed his foe with the deadliest curses. He felt that he had never wronged the man otherwise than by marrying the girl he had loved. But he knew that, besides this, there was another reason, which, though he himself was not to blame for it, the squire might see fit to revenge upon him. It was a secret between them, and they had never breathed it to mortal ears.