Contradictory as it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more than ever.  A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit of his employer not to be thought of.  He therefore assumed the same attitude as had Mr. Flint, and forced the burden of explanation upon Austen, relying surely on the disinclination of his son to be specific.  And Austen, considering his relationship, could not be expected to fathom these mental processes.

“See here, Judge,” he said, greatly embarrassed by the real affection he felt, “I don’t want to seem like a prig and appear to be sitting in judgment upon a man of your experience and position especially since I have the honour to be your son, and have made a good deal of trouble by a not irreproachable existence.  Since we have begun on the subject, however, I think I ought to tell you that I have taken the case of Zeb Meader against the Northeastern Railroads.”

“Wahn’t much need of telling me, was there?” remarked the Honourable Hilary, dryly.  “I’d have found it out as soon as anybody else.”

“There was this need of telling you,” answered Austen, steadily, “although I am not in partnership with you, I bear your name.  And in-as-much as I am to have a suit against your client, it has occurred to me that you would like me to move—­elsewhere.”

The Honourable Hilary was silent for a long time.

“Want to move—­do you?  Is that it?”

“Only because my presence may embarrass you.”

“That wahn’t in the contract,” said the Honourable Hilary; “you’ve got a right to take any fool cases you’ve a mind to.  Folks know pretty well I’m not mixed up in ’em.”

Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father’s animus in this matter.  As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier.

“And then,” he continued, “in taking, a course so obviously against your wishes and judgment it occurred to me—­well, that I was eating at your table and sleeping in your house.”

To his son’s astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently.

“I thought the time’d come when you’d want to go off again,—­gypsying,” he cried.

“I’d stay right here in Ripton, Judge.  I believe my work is in this State.”

The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it.  The effect of Austen’s assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up.  And yet a growing dread of Hilary Vane’s had been the loneliness of declining years in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return.