"Mother!" he cried, holding out his arms to receive the poor weeper, "dear mother! what have I done to be thus treated?"
A convulsive spasm choked his utterance; and as she seated herself beside him on the grass, his head sunk upon her lap, as in other years, and the proud man's spirit was humbled and subdued like that of a little child.
"Your father, Algernon, has died, committing an act of injustice, but for your mother's sake you must forgive him."
Algernon tore up several tufts of grass, and flung them with violence from him—but he remained silent.
"Your brother, too, my Algernon, though harsh and unkind in his general deportment, feels for your present situation. He is anxious to make some amends to you for the injustice of his father. He sent me to tell you that any sum you may think fit to name, and which you consider sufficient to settle you in life, shall be yours."
"He sent you—he—the hypocrite! Was it not he who robbed me of my father's love—he, who has robbed me of my natural claims to a portion of my father's property? What! does the incendiary think that I am blind to his treachery—that I am ignorant of the hand that struck me this blow—that I will stoop to receive as a liberal donation, an act of special favor, a modicum of that which ought to be my own? Mother, I will starve before I can receive one farthing from him!"
"Do not be rash, my son"—
"Mother, I cannot be mean. It grieves me, dearest mother, that you should undertake to be the bearer of this message to me."
"Are you not both my children?—though, God knows, not equally dear; and ought not the welfare of both to be precious to the heart of a mother? It is not so: Mark never had an equal share of my affections, and God has punished me for my undue partiality, by making him the heir of all."
"But, mother, this was no fault of mine."