For some seconds neither spoke, then Rutter raised his head and looked into his son’s face.

“I didn’t know it was you, Harry.  I have been hunting you all day to ask your pardon.”  It was the memory of the last indignity he had heaped upon him that tortured him.

“I knew you didn’t, father.”

“Don’t go away again, Harry, please don’t, my son!” he pleaded, strangling the tears, trying to regain his self-control—­tears had often of late moistened Rutter’s lids.  “Your mother can’t stand it another year, and I’m breaking up—­half blind.  You won’t go, will you?”

“No—­not right away, father—­we’ll talk of that later.”  He was still in the dark as to how it had come about.  All he knew was that for the first time in all his life his father had asked his pardon, and for the first time in his life the barrier which held them apart had been broken down.

The colonel braced himself in his seat in one supreme effort to get himself in hand.  One of his boasts was that he had never lost his self-control.  Harry rose to his feet and stood beside him.  St. George, trembling from his own weakness, a great throb of thankfulness in his heart, had kept his place in his chair, his eyes turned away from the scene.  His own mind had also undergone a change.  He had always known that somewhere down in Talbot Rutter’s heart—­down underneath the strata of pride and love of power, there could be found the heart of a father—­indeed he had often predicted to himself just such a coming together.  It was the boy’s pluck and manliness that had done it; a manliness free from all truckling or cringing.  And then his tenderness over the man who had of all others in the world wronged him most!  He could hardly keep his glad hands off the boy.

“You will go home with me, of course, won’t you, Harry?” He must ask his consent now—­this son of his whom he had driven from his home and insulted in the presence of his friends at the club, and whom he could see was now absolutely independent of him—­and what was more to the point absolutely his own master.

“Yes, of course, I’ll go home with you, father,” came the respectful answer, “if mother isn’t coming in.  Did she or Alec say anything to you about it before you left?”

“No, she isn’t coming in to-day—­I wouldn’t let her.  It was too early when I started.  But that’s not what I mean,” he went on with increasing excitement.  “I want you to go home with me and stay forever; I want to forget the past; I want St. George to hear me say so!  Come and take your place at the head of the estate—­I will have Gorsuch arrange the papers to-morrow.  You and St. George must go back with me to-day.  I have the large carryall—­Matthew is with me—­he stopped at the corner—­he’s there now.”

“That’s very kind of you, father,” Harry rejoined calmly, concealing as best he could his disappointment at not being able to see his mother.

“Yes! of course you will go with me,” his father continued in nervous, jerky tones.  “Please send the servant for Matthew, my coachman, and have him drive up.  As for you, St. George, you can’t stay here another hour.  How you ever got here is more than I can understand.  Moorlands is the place for you both—­you’ll get well there.  My carriage is a very easy one.  Perhaps I had better go for Matthew myself.”