“And what of that? He’s no more like me than Hopkins is. You are the only one that is like me. I have sent for Babington to make another will.”
“I do not want your money, papa.”
“Softly, young woman; nobody is offering it to you. I don’t mean to be like King Lear. Indeed, for anything I know, I may marry, and put all your noses out of joint. But in the meantime”—
“I will never supplant my brother,” said Winifred. “I will never take what does not belong to me. I wish you would dispose of it otherwise, father. It is yours to do what you like with it; but I have a will of my own too.”
“That you have,” he said with a smile; “that’s one of the things I like in you. Not like that cur, that could do nothing but shiver and cringe and cry.”
“Tom did not cry,” she exclaimed indignantly. “He did not think you could have the heart. And how could you have the heart? Your own son! I ask myself sometimes whether you have any heart at all.”
“Ask away; you are at liberty to form your own opinion,” he said good-humouredly. “If that fellow had faced me as you do, now—but mind you, Winnie, if you go against me, I am not so partial to you but that I shall take means to have my own way. What I have, nobody in this world has any right to but myself. I have made it every penny, and I shall dispose of it as I please. If you think you will be able to do what you like with it after I am gone, you’re mistaken; take care—there are ways in which you can displease me now, as much as Tom has done. So you had better think a little of your own affairs.”
She looked at him with startled eyes.
“I don’t wish to displease you, papa—I don’t know”—
“Not what I mean perhaps? Remember that the sort of match which might be good enough for Winnie with two brothers over her head, might not be fit for Miss Chester of Bedloe. I don’t want to say any more.”