“What shall I say to him?” his sister asked.

“Tell him that he had better go back to London.  I have tried them both, as few sons can be tried by their father, and I know them now.  Tell him, with my compliments, that it will be better for him not to see me.  There can be nothing pleasant said between us.  I have no communication to make to him which could in the least interest him.”

But before night came the squire had been talked over, and had agreed to see his son.  “The interview will be easy enough for me,” he had said, “but I cannot imagine what he will get from me.  But let him come as he will.”

Augustus spent much of the intervening time in discussing the matter with his aunt.  But not a word on the subject was spoken by him to Mountjoy, whom he met at dinner, and with whom he spent the evening in company with Mr. Merton.  The two hours after dinner were melancholy enough.  The three adjourned to the smoking-room, and sat there almost without conversation.  A few words were said about the hunting, but Mountjoy had not hunted this winter.  There were a few also of greater interest about the shooting.  The shooting was of course still the property of the old man, and in the early months had, without many words spoken, become, as it were, an appanage of the condition of life to which Augustus aspired; but of late Mountjoy had assumed the command.  “You found plenty of pheasants here, I suppose,” Augustus remarked.

“Well, yes; not too many.  I didn’t trouble myself much about it.  When I saw a pheasant I shot it.  I’ve been a little troubled in spirit, you know.”

“Gambling again, I heard.”

“That didn’t trouble me much.  Merton can tell you that we’ve had a sick-house.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Merton.  “It hasn’t seemed to be a time in which a man would think very much of his pheasants.”

“I don’t know why,” said Augustus, who was determined not to put up with the rebuke implied in the doctor’s words.  After that there was nothing more said between them till they all went to their separate apartments.  “Don’t contradict him,” his aunt said to him the next morning, “and if he reprimands you, acknowledge that you have been wrong.”

“That’s hard, when I haven’t been wrong.”

“But so much depends upon it; and he is so stern.  Of course, I wish well for both of you.  There is plenty enough,—­plenty; if only you could agree together.”

“But the injustice of his treatment.  Is it true that he now declares Mountjoy to be the eldest son?”

“I believe so.  I do not know, but I believe it.”

“Think of what his conduct has been to me.  And then you tell me that I am to own that I have been wrong!  In what have I been wrong?”

“He is your father, and I suppose you have said hard words to him.”

“Did I rebuke him because he had fraudulently kept me for so many years in the position of a younger son?  Did I not forgive him that iniquity?”