Vaughan, who had been more than once on the point of interrupting him, did so at last. “I could not accept it!” he exclaimed impulsively. And he rose, with a hot face, from his seat. “I could not accept it.”
“As a legacy?” Wetherell, who was fond of money, said with a queer look. “As a legacy, eh? Why not?” While Sir Robert, with compressed lips, almost repented of his generosity. He had looked for some show of good-feeling, some word of sympathy, some felicitation from the young man, who, after all, was his blood relation. But if this was to be his return, if his advances were to be met with suspicion, his benevolence with churlishness, then all, all in this young man was of a piece—and detestable!
And certainly Vaughan was not showing himself in the best light. He was conscious that he had taken the news ill; but he could not change his attitude in a moment. Under no circumstances is it an easy thing to take a gift with grace: to take one with grace under these circumstances—and when he had already misbehaved—was beyond him, as it would have been beyond most men.
For a moment drawn this way by his temper, that way by his better feelings, he did not know how to answer Wetherell’s last words. At last and lamely, “May I ask,” he said, “why Sir Robert makes me this offer while the matter lies open?”
“Sir Robert will prove his case,” Wetherell answered gruffly, “if that is what you mean.”
“I mean——”
“He does not ask you to surrender anything.”
“I am bound to say, then, that the offer is very generous,” Vaughan replied, melting, and speaking with some warmth. “Most generous. But——”
“He asks you to surrender nothing,” Wetherell repeated stolidly, his face between his knees.
“But I still think it is premature,” Vaughan persisted doggedly. “And handsome as it is, more than handsome as it is, I think that it would have come with greater force, were my position first made clear!”