'I never heard of your troubles,' said Mrs. Cusworth; 'Mr. Pennycomequick did not speak to us of your father. He was very reserved about family matters.'

'He never forgave my father so long as the breath was in him. That was like a Pennycomequick. We are slow in forming attachments or dislikes, but when formed we do not alter. And I—I shall never forgive the man who spoiled my father's career, and well-nigh spoiled mine.'

'Who was that, and how did he manage it?' asked Janet.

'How did he manage it? Why, he first induced my father to draw his money out of this business, and then swindled him out of it—out of almost every pound he had. By his rascality he reduced my poor father from being a man comfortably off to one in straitened circumstances; he deprived him of a home, drove him—can you conceive of a worse fate?—to live and die in furnished lodgings.'

Mrs. Cusworth did not speak. She was a little shocked at his bitterness. His face had darkened as with a suffusion of black blood under the skin, and a hard look came into his eyes, giving them a metallic glitter. He went on, noticing the bad impression he had made—he went on to justify himself. 'My father's heart was broken. He lost all hope, all joy in life, all interest in everything. I think of him as a wreck, over which the waves beat and which is piecemeal broken up—partly by the waves, partly by wreckers. That has soured me. Hamilcar brought up his son Hannibal to swear hatred to the Romans. I may almost say that I was reared in the same manner; not by direct teaching, but by every privation, every slight, every discouragement—by the sight of my father's crushed life, and by the hopelessness that had come on my own, to sear a bitter implacable hatred of the name of Schofield.'

'Of whom?'

'Schofield—Earle Schofield. Earle was his Christian name—that is, his forename. He had not anything Christian about him.'

Philip detected a look—a startled, terrified exchange of glances—between mother and daughter.

'I see,' continued Philip, 'that I have alarmed you by the strength of my feelings. If you had endured what my father and I have endured, knowing that it was attributable to one man, then, also, you would be a heathen in your feelings towards him and all belonging to him.'

The old lady and her daughter no longer exchanged glances; they looked on the ground.