“If you think that this is satisfactory to me,” said Dolff, “you are making an immense mistake. Why should least said be soonest mended? Is there any disgrace belonging to our name? Besides,” he said, himself a little breathless, with an instinctive sense that his words were words of fate, “my father—is not dead.”
“What?” said Dr. Harding. He jumped up from his chair as if he had been stung. “What? Adolphus Harwood not dead? My God! Adolphus Harwood? What does this mean?”
Mrs. Harwood was making convulsive efforts to speak, to rise from her chair, but nobody heeded her. Dolff stood confronting the stranger, in his ignorance, poor boy, fearing he knew not what, angry, beginning to awake to the fact that there might be need for defence, and that the danger was his own. He said:
“I don’t know why you speak in such a tone. There is no harm, I suppose, in my father—being alive. We never knew till the other day. Perhaps she can tell you why. Is there any harm in my father—not having died?”
His voice had grown hoarse with an alarm which he did not himself understand.
“Harm!” cried Dr. Harding. “Adolphus Harwood alive!—harm! Only this harm—that I can’t let old friendship stand in the way. I dare not do injustice; he must be given up to answer for his ill-doings. Harm! The fool! He never did but what was the worst for him! to live till now—with all the misery and ruin that he brought——”
Dolff frantically seized the doctor by the breast.
“Stop,” he said, “tell me what has he done? I knew—I knew there was more in it; what has he done?”
“Done!” cried the doctor, flinging the young man off from him, “done! ruined everybody that ever trusted in him! Don’t stop me, young man! Keep yourself clear of him! I cannot help it; I am sorry for your sake—but he must be given up.”
“To what?” cried Dolff, “to what?” He put himself in front of the doctor, who was buttoning his coat hastily and had seized his hat from the floor. “Look here! to what? You don’t stir a foot from here till you tell me.”