It was not merely defiance of the dreadful old tradition, which Lord Ashbridge had announced in the manner of Moses stepping down from Sinai, that prompted this appalling statement of the case; it was the joy in the profession of his love.  It had to be flung out like that.  Lord Ashbridge looked at him a moment in dead silence.

“I have not the honour of knowing Miss—­Miss Falbe, is it?” he said; “nor shall I have that honour.”

Michael got up; there was that in his father’s tone that stung him to fury.

“It is very likely that you will not,” he said, “since when I proposed to her yesterday she did not accept me.”

Somehow Lord Ashbridge felt that as an insult to himself.  Indeed, it was a double insult.  Michael had proposed to this singer, and this singer had not instantly clutched him.  He gave his dreadful little treble giggle.

“And I am to bind up your broken heart?” he asked.

Michael drew himself up to his full height.  This was an indiscretion, for it but made his father recognise how short he was.  It brought farce into the tragic situation.

“Oh, by no means,” he said.  “My heart is not going to break yet.  I don’t give up hope.”

Then, in a flash, he thought of his mother’s pale, anxious face, her desire that he should not vex his father.

“I am sorry,” he said, “but that is the case.  I wish—­I wish you would try to understand me.”

“I find you incomprehensible,” said Lord Ashbridge, and left the room with his high walk and his swinging elbows.

Well, it was done now, and Michael felt that there were no new vexations to be sprung on his father.  It was bound to happen, he supposed, sooner or later, and he was not sorry that it had happened sooner than he expected or intended.  Sylvia so held sway in him that he could not help acknowledging her.  His announcement had broken from him irresistibly, in spite of his mother’s whispered word to him last night, “This is our secret.”  It could not be secret when his father spoke like that. . . .  And then, with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his father disliked him.  Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been responsible for that miserable retort, “Am I to bind up your broken heart?” Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael’s announcement could not have been conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly disliked him.  That he was a continual monument of disappointment to his father he knew well, but never before had it been quite plainly shown him how essential an object of dislike he was.  And the grounds of the dislike were now equally plain—­his father disliked him exactly because he was his father.  On the other hand, the last twenty-four hours had shown him that his mother loved him exactly because he was her son.  When these two new and undeniable facts were put side by side, Michael felt that he was an infinite gainer.