“But he says you are a younger son.”

“This last move,” he said, with great passion, “has only been made in an attempt to punish me, because I would not tell him that I was under a world of obligations to him for simply declaring the truth as to my birth.  We cannot both be his eldest son.”

“No, certainly, not both.”

“At last he declared that I was his heir.  If I did say hard words to him, were they not justified?”

“Not to your father,” said Miss Scarborough, shaking her head.

“That is your idea?  How was I to abstain?  Think what had been done to me.  Through my whole life he had deceived me, and had attempted to rob me.”

“But he says that he had intended to get the property for you.”

“To get it!  It was mine.  According to what he said it was my own.  He had robbed me to give it to Mountjoy.  Now he intends to rob me again in order that Mountjoy may have it.  He will leave such a kettle of fish behind him, with all his manoeuvring, that neither of us will be the better of Tretton.”

Then he went to the squire.  In spite of what had passed between him and his aunt, he had thought deeply of his conduct to his father in the past, and of the manner in which he would now carry himself.  He was aware that he had behaved,—­not badly, for that he esteemed nothing,—­but most unwisely.  When he had found himself to be the heir to Tretton he had fancied himself to be almost the possessor, and had acted on the instincts which on such a case would have been natural to him.  To have pardoned the man because he was his father, and then to have treated him with insolent disdain, as some dying old man, almost entirely beneath his notice, was what he felt the nature of the circumstances demanded.  And whether the story was true or false it would have been the same.  He had come at last to believe it to be true, and had therefore been the more resolute; but, whether it were true or false, the old man had struck his blow, and he must abide by it.  Till the moment came in which he had received that communication from Tretton, the idea had never occurred to him that another disposition of the property might still be within his father’s power.  But he had little known the old man’s power, or the fertility of his resources, or the extent of his malice.  “After what you have done you should cease to stay and disturb us,” he had once said, when his father had jokingly alluded to his own death.  He had at once repented, and had felt that such a speech had been iniquitous as coming from a son.  But his father had, at the moment, expressed no deep animosity.  Some sarcastic words had fallen from him of which Augustus had not understood the bitterness.  But he had remembered it since, and was now not so much surprised at his father’s wish to injure him as at his power.

But could he have any such power?  Mr. Grey, he knew, was on his side, and Mr. Grey was a thorough lawyer.  All the world was on his side,—­all the world having been instructed to think and to believe that Mr. Scarborough had not been married till after Mountjoy was born.  All the world had been much surprised, and would be unwilling to encounter another blow.  Should he go into his father’s room altogether penitent, or should he hold up his head and justify himself?