‘I’ve told you I’m willing enough to earn money,’ cried Osborne, passionately at last.  ’But how am I to do it?  You really are very unreasonable, sir.’

‘Am I?’ said the squire—­cooling in manner, though not in temper, as Osborne grew warm.  ’But I don’t set up for being reasonable:  men who have to pay away money that they haven’t got for their extravagant sons, aren’t likely to be reasonable.  There’s two things you’ve gone and done which put me beside myself, when I think of them:  you’ve turned out next door to a dunce at college, when your poor mother thought so much of you—­and when you might have pleased and gratified her so if you chose—­and, well!  I won’t say what the other thing is.’

‘Tell me, sir,’ said Osborne, almost breathless with the idea that his father had discovered his secret marriage; but the father was thinking of the money-lenders, who were calculating how soon Osborne would come into the estate.

‘No!’ said the squire.  ’I know what I know; and I’m not going to tell you how I know it.  Only, I’ll just say this—­your friends no more know a piece of good timber when they see it than you or I know how you could earn five pounds if it was to keep you from starving.  Now, there’s Roger—­we none of us made an ado about him; but he’ll have his fellowship now I’ll warrant him, and be a bishop, or a chancellor, or something, before we’ve found out he’s clever—­we’ve been so much taken up thinking about you.  I don’t know what’s come over me to speak of “we”—­“we” in this way,’ said he, suddenly dropping his voice,—­a change of tone as sad as sad could be.  ’I ought to say “I;” it will be “I” for evermore in this world.’

He got up and left the room in quick haste, knocking over his chair, and not stopping to pick it up.  Osborne, who was sitting and shading his eyes with his hand, as he had been doing for some time, looked up at the noise, and then rose as quickly and hurried after his father, only in time to hear the study-door locked on the inside the moment he reached it.

Osborne returned into the dining-room chagrined and sorrowful.  But he was always sensitive to any omission of the usual observances, which might excite remark; and even with his heavy heart he was careful to pick up the fallen chair, and restore it to its place near the bottom of the table; and afterwards so to disturb the dishes as to make it appear that they had been touched, before ringing for Robinson.  When the latter came in, followed by Thomas, Osborne thought it necessary to say to him that his father was not well, and had gone into the study; and that he himself wanted no dessert, but would have a cup of coffee in the drawing-room.  The old butler sent Thomas out of the room, and came up confidentially to Osborne.

’I thought master wasn’t justly himself, Mr. Osborne, before dinner.  And therefore I made excuses for him—­I did.  He spoke to Thomas about the fire, sir, which is a thing I could in nowise put up with, unless by reason of sickness, which I am always ready to make allowances for.’