"And have you told Mistress Marjorie about your sad rogue of a father?"
Robin, white with anger, held his lips grimly together and the wrath blazed in an instant up from the scornful old heart, whose very love was turned to gall.
"Tell me, sir—I will have it!" he cried.
Robin looked at him with such hard fury in his eyes that for a moment the man winced. Then he recovered himself, and again his anger rose to the brim.
"You need not look at me like that, you hound. Tell me, I say!"
"I will not!" shouted Robin, springing to his feet.
The old man was up too by now, with all the anger of his son hardened by his dignity.
"You will not?"
"No."
For a moment the fate of them both still hung in the balance. If, even at this instant, the father had remembered his love rather than his dignity, had thought of the past and its happy years, rather than of the blinding, swollen present; or, on the other side, if the son had but submitted if only for an hour, and obeyed in order that he might rule later—the whole course might have run aright, and no hearts have been broken and no blood shed. But neither would yield. There was the fierce northern obstinacy in them both; the gentle birth sharpened its edge; the defiant refusal of the son, the wounding contempt of the father not for his son only, but for his son's love—these things inflamed the hearts of both to madness. The father seized his ultimate right, and struck his son across the face.