Thus, at length, was Sir Robert the younger informed of the history of his inheritance. Thus, also, was it an aggravation¹ of that wounding recital² that, to all appearance, he might have earlier induced Mr. Creel to it—at a period when he himself was less bound to the conduct of a responsibility which he now knew he had undertaken upon terms that seemed to him unnecessarily humiliating, and which he could not but think he would surely otherwise have declined. For, if any love had dictated³ the gift—the new chance to a repentant⁴ prodigal—it was harder than Roman in its expression.

 

So he thought, smarting under the lash⁵ of his father’s prejudgment; and it was only by and by, in one of those elastic⁶ rebounds⁷ that were characteristic of the man and constitutional, that he came to consider that it was a prejudgment, and that, had his father lived to see it verified, he might have modified at least the asperity⁸ of his language.

 

This was little comfort; but it was some.

 

At first he had had a wild temptation to reject, at the eleventh hour, a gift which only his ignorance had accepted. It passed, however, in the reflection that, whatever the pre-history of “Delsrop” (with which he had no concern), the property was indubitably his at the present moment to do with as he chose; that he had already incurred⁹, in his management of it, responsibilities that he could not with honour repudiate¹⁰; and that the

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