"Then don't talk with me."
"You will make out that you haven't done anything wrong yourself, but your friends have made a martyr of you. When I offer to get you out of the scrape into which you have plunged, you speak just as though you were the injured party."
"Exactly so, and I speak just what I mean. You talk to me just as though you and your father had not suppressed my father's will, intending to rob me of my inheritance, and kept my mother in a madhouse for ten or a dozen years."
"What sort of bosh are you talking now?" demanded Tom, with an effort, while his face was pale, and his frame trembled.
"I can prove it all. If you and your father wish to tell me where my mother is, and to make terms you can tell me what you will do," I added, following up my advantage.
"You have taken some ridiculous notion into your head, and I really don't know what you are talking about."
"Did you ever read my father's will?"
"Your father's will!" exclaimed he. "I never heard that he made a will. If he did, it was the most ridiculous thing he ever did in the whole course of his life, for he hadn't a penny to leave."
"Perhaps you can tell me why my uncle so persistently refused to tell me anything about my father or my mother?"
"I certainly can if you insist upon it; though, having more regard for you than you have for yourself, I should prefer to follow your uncle's example, and not say anything about them."