the same exquisite and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had made to him in the course of their married life.  Having satisfactorily eyed Mrs. Caresfoot off into a better world, her husband gave up all idea of further matrimonial ventures, and set himself to heap up riches.  But a little before his wife’s death, and just after his son’s birth, an event had occurred in the family that had disturbed him not a little.

His father had left two sons, himself and a brother, many years his junior.  Now this brother was very dear to Mr. Caresfoot; his affection for him was the one weak point in his armour; nor was it rendered any the less sincere, but rather the more touching, by the fact that its object was little better than half-witted.  It is therefore easy to imagine his distress and anger when he heard that a woman who had till shortly before been kitchen-maid at the Abbey House, and was now living in the village, had been confined of a son which she fixed upon his brother, whose wife she declared herself to be.  Investigation only brought out the truth of the story; his weak-minded brother had been entrapped into a glaring mesalliance.

But Mr. Caresfoot proved himself equal to the occasion.  So soon as his “sister-in-law,” as it pleased him to call her sardonically, had sufficiently recovered, he called upon her.  What took place at the visit never transpired, but next day Mrs. E. Caresfoot left her native place never to return, the child remaining with the father, or rather with the uncle.  That boy was George.  At the time when this story opens both his parents were dead:  his father from illness resulting from entire failure of brain power, the mother from drink.

Whether it was that he considered the circumstance of the lad’s birth entitled him to peculiar consideration, or that he transferred to him the affection he bore his father, the result was that his nephew was quite as dear if not even dearer to Mr. Caresfoot than his own son.  Not, however, that he allowed his preference to be apparent, save in the negative way that he was blind to faults in George that he was sufficiently quick to note in Philip.  To observers this partiality seemed the more strange when they thought upon Philip’s bonny face and form, and then noted how the weak-brained father and coarse-blooded mother had left their mark in George’s thick lips, small, restless eyes, pallid complexion, and loose-jointed form.

When Philip shook off his cousin’s grasp and vanished towards the lake, he did so with bitter wrath and hatred in his heart, for he saw but too clearly that he had deeply injured himself in his father’s estimation, and, what was more, he felt that so much as he had sunk his side of the balance, by so much he had raised up that of George.  He was inculpated; a Bellamy came upon the scene to save George, and, what was worse, an untruthful Bellamy; he was the aggressor, and George the meek in spirit with the soft answer that turneth away wrath.  It was intolerable; he hated his father, he hated George.  There was no justice in the world, and he had not wit to play rogue with such a one as his cousin.  Appearances were always against him; he hated everybody.