Young Gilbert's face darkened again at the mention of his cousin's name. As between the two brothers years ago there had been a feud that nothing had ever healed, so between the two cousins there had arisen a deadly enmity which nothing in this world (so young Gilbert vowed a thousand times to himself) should ever bridge over. They were good haters, those Denisons, and never more so than when they had quarrelled with one of their own kith and kin.
"No, the old roof-tree shall be yours, Gilbert, and all that pertains to it," continued Mr. Denison, "as you will find when my will comes to be read. You will find, too, a good balance to your credit at the bank, for I have not been an improvident man. At the same time I have had expenses and losses of which you know nothing. But--there is a 'but' to everything in this world, you know--you will find in my will a certain proviso which I doubt not you will think a strange one, most probably a hard one, and which I feel sure you will at first resent almost as if I had done you a personal injury. It has not been without much thought and deliberation that the proviso I speak of has been embodied in the will, but I fully believe that twenty years hence, should you live as long, you will bless my memory for having so introduced it."
Mr. Denison lay back for a moment or two to gather breath. His nephew spake no word, but sat with his eyes bent studiously on the floor.
"Gilbert, as a rule we Denisons are a long-lived race," resumed the dying man, "and but for this unhappy accident, I have a fancy that I should have worn for another score years at the least. If you have ever been at the trouble to read the inscriptions on the tombs of your ancestors in Nullington Church, you must have noticed how many of them lived to be seventy-five, eighty, and in some cases ninety years of age. Now, what prospect or likelihood is there of your living to be even seventy years old? Your constitution is impaired already. That dark, sunken look about the eyes, those fine-drawn lines around the mouth, what business have they there at your age? I tell you, Gilbert Denison, that if you do not change your mode of life at once and for ever, you will not live to see your thirtieth birthday. And what probability is there that you will change it? That is the question that I have asked myself, not once, but a thousand times. If this wild and reckless mode of life has such fascinations for you, that it has induced you to dissipate the fortune left you by your father, to apply to me more than once to extricate you from your difficulties, to involve you deeply with the money-lenders, and to bring you at length to contemplate I know not what as a mode of escape from your troubles, what sort of hold will it have over you when you come into the uncontrolled possession of six thousand a year? That is a problem which I, for my part, cannot answer."
Mr. Denison paused as though he expected a reply to his last question. There was silence for a little while, and then the nephew spoke in a low, constrained voice.
"I can only repeat, sir, what I said before: that you had better let me go headlong to ruin my own way."
"Not so. I have told you already that I have made you my heir. Heron Dyke, and all that pertains to it, will call you master in a few short hours. It----" but here he broke off for a moment to overcome some inward emotion. "I shall never see the old place again, and I had such schemes for the next dozen years! Well--well! we Denisons are not children that we should cry because our hopes are taken from us."
"Sir, is not this excitement too much for you?" asked the nephew.
But the other cleared his voice, and went on more firmly than before:
"Yes, Gilbert, the old roof-tree and the broad acres shall all be yours, and long may you live to enjoy them. That is now the dearest wish left me on earth."