“I shall ask you, Giles, as you have kept this matter absolutely secret so long, to keep it secret still; at any rate for awhile, from every person whatever.”

“I think you have a right to expect that of me, I will.”

“Poor little fellow! died at Corfu then.  The news is all over Wigfield by this time, no doubt.  John knows it of course, now.”  Again he paused, and this time it was his uncle’s last conversation that recurred to his memory.  It was most unwelcome.  Brandon could see that he looked more than disturbed; he was also angry; and yet after awhile, both these feelings melted away, he was like a man who had walked up to a cobweb, that stretched itself before his face, but when he had put up his hand and cleared it off, where was it?

He remembered how the vague talk of a dying old man had startled him.

The manner of the gift and the odd feeling he had suffered at the time, as if it might be somehow connected with the words said, appeared to rise up to be looked at.  But one can hardly look straight at a thing of that sort without making it change its aspect.  Sensations and impressions are subject to us; they may be reasoned down.  His reason was stronger than his fear had been, and made it look foolish.  He brought back the words, they were disjointed, they accused no one, they could not be put together.  So he covered that recollection over, and threw it aside.  He did not consciously hide it from himself, but he did know in his own mind that he should not relate it to his brother.

“Well, you have done your part,” he said at length; “and now I must see about doing mine.”

“No one could feel more keenly than I do, how hard this is upon you,” said Brandon; but Valentine detected a tone of relief in his voice, as if he took the words to mean a submission to the father’s wish, and as if he was glad.  “My poor father might have placed some confidence in me, instead of treating me like a child,” he said bitterly; “why on earth could he not tell me all.”

“Why, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Brandon; “surely if you were to renounce the property, it would have been hard upon you and John to be shamed or tortured by any knowledge of the crime and disgrace that it came with.”

“That it came with!” repeated Valentine; “you take that for granted, then?  You have got further than I have.”

“I think, of course, that the crime was committed, or the disgrace incurred, for the sake of the property.”

“Well,” said Valentine, “I am much more uncertain about the whole thing than you seem to be.  I shall make it my duty to investigate the matter.  I must find out everything; perhaps it will be only too easy; according to what I find I shall act.  One generation has no right so to dominate over another as to keep it always in childlike bondage to a command for which no reason is given.  If, when I know, I consider that my dear father was right, I shall of my own free-will sell the land, and divest myself of the proceeds.  If that he was wrong, I shall go and live fearlessly and freely in that house, and on that land which, in the course of providence, has come to me.”