“You'll put these weak notions from your mind, Justin, and prove worthy the noble lady who was your mother?”
Mr. Caryll moved aside again, hanging his head, his face pale and troubled. Where Everard's arguments must fail, his own affection for Everard was like to conquer him. It was very weak in him, he told himself; but then his love for Everard was strong, and he would fain spare Everard the pain he knew he must be occasioning him. Still he did battle, his repugnance up in arms.
“I would you could see the matter as I see it,” he sighed. “This man grown old, and reaping in his old age the fruits of the egotism he has sown. I do not believe that in all the world there is a single soul would weep his lordship's death—if we except, perhaps, Mistress Winthrop.”
“And do you pity him for that?” quoth Sir Richard coldly. “What right has he to expect aught else? Who sows for himself, reaps for himself. I marvel, indeed, that there should be even one to bewail him—to spare him a kind thought.”
“And even there,” mused Mr. Caryll, “it is perhaps gratitude rather than affection that inspires the kindness.”
“Who is Mistress Winthrop?”
“His ward. As sweet a lady, I think, as I have ever seen,” said Mr. Caryll, incautious enthusiasm assailing him. Sir Richard's eyes narrowed.
“You have some acquaintance with her?” he suggested.
Very briefly Mr. Caryll sketched for the second time that evening the circumstances of his first meeting with Rotherby.
Sir Richard nodded sardonically. “Hum! He is his father's son, not a doubt of that. 'Twill be a most worthy successor to my Lord Ostermore. But the lady? Tell me of the lady. How comes she linked with them?”