“Well, it is mine,” he said good-humouredly.
“Yes; and instead of settling it upon me when you married, you must needs settle it on your wife! Don’t you talk of selfishness, Arnold.”
“My wife does not derive any benefit from it. It has made no difference to you.”
“She would derive it, though, if you died. Where should I be then?”
“I am not going to die, I hope. Oh, mother, if you only knew how these discussions vex me!”
“Then you should show yourself generous.”
“Generous!” he exclaimed, in a pained tone. And, goaded to it by his remembrance of what he had done for her in the present and in the past, he went on to speak more plainly than he had ever spoken yet. “Do you forget that a great portion of what you enjoy should, by right, be mine? Is mine!”
“Yours!” she scornfully said.
“Yes: mine. Not by legal right, but by moral. When my father died he left the whole of his property to you. Considerably more than the half of that property had been brought to him by my mother: some people might have thought that much should have descended to her son.”
“He did not leave me the whole. You had a share of it.”