"Your reasons."
"Because I must stay where I am. I wish I had never come—never set up these chambers; I do wish that. But, as I did so, here I am fixed."
"I cannot think why you did come—flying from your home as soon as your father was under ground. Had you succeeded to twenty thousand a-year, you could but have made hot haste to launch out in the metropolis."
"I did not come to launch out," returned Robert, angrily. "I came to get rid of myself. It was so wretched down there."
Oscar stared. "What made it so?"
"The remembrance of my father. Every face I met, every stick and stone about the place seemed to reproach me with his death. And justly. But for my carelessness he would not have died."
"Well, that is all past and gone, Robert. You shall come back to the Grange with me. You will be safe there."
"No. It is too late."
"It is not too late. What do you mean? If——"
"I tell you it is too late," burst out Robert, in a sharp tone: and Oscar thought it was full of anguish.