“Everything you could, to blight every ambition I ever had!” Gerard replied, with a suppressed violence.

Rotherham looked considerably taken aback. “Comprehensive!” he said dryly.

“It’s true! You never liked me! Just because I didn’t wish to hunt, or box, or play cricket, or shoot, or—or any of the things you like, except fishing, and it’s no thanks to you I do like fishing, because you forbade me to borrow your rods, as though I had intended to break it—I mean—”

“What you mean,” said Rotherham ruthlessly, “is that I taught you in one sharp lesson not to take my rods without leave! If this is a sample of the various ways in which I have blighted your ambition—”

“Well, it isn’t! I only—Well, anyway, I shouldn’t care for that if it weren’t for all the rest! It has been one thing after another! When I was at Eton, and had the chance to spend the summer holidays sailing with friends, could I prevail upon you to give your consent? No! You sent me to that miserable grinder, just because my tutor told you I shouldn’t pass Little-Go. Much he knew about it! But of course you chose to believe him, and not me, because you have always taken a—a malicious delight in thwarting me! Ay! and when you knew that I wanted to go up to Oxford, with my particular friends, you sent me to Cambridge! If that was not malice, what was it?”

Rotherham, who had stretched both legs out, was lying back in his chair, with his ankles crossed, and his hands in, the pockets of his buckskin breeches, regarding his incensed ward with a look of sardonic amusement He said: “A desire to separate you from your particular friends. Go on!”

This answer not unnaturally fanned the flames of Mr Monksleigh’s fury. “You admit it! I guessed as much! All of a piece! Yes, and you refused to lend me the money to get my poems published, and not content with that, you insulted me!”

“Did I?” said Rotherham, faintly surprised.

“You know you did! You said you liked better security for your investments!”

“That was certainly unkind. You must blame my unfortunate manner! I’ve never had the least finesse, I fear. However, I can’t feel that I blighted that ambition. You’ll be of age in little more than a year, and then you can pay to have the poems published yourself.”

“And I shall do so! And also,” said Gerard belligerently, “I shall choose what friends I like, and go where I like, and do what I like!”

“Rake’s Progress. Have I chosen any friends for you, by the way?”

“No, you haven’t! All you do is to object to my friends! Would you permit me to visit Brighton, that time, when Lord Grosmont asked me to go along with him? No, you would not! But that wasn’t the worst! Last year! When I came down in the middle of term, after Boney escaped from Elba, and begged you to give me permission to enroll as a volunteer! Did you listen to a word I said? Did you consider the matter? Did you give me permission? Did—”

“No,” interrupted Rotherham unexpectedly. “I did not.” Disconcerted by this sudden answer to his rhetorical questions Gerard glared at him. “And very poor-spirited I thought you, to submit so tamely to my decree,” Rotherham added.

A vivid flush rose to Gerard’s face. He said hotly: “I was forced to submit! You have always had the whip-hand! I have been obliged to do as you ordered me, because you paid for my education, and for my brothers’, and Cambridge too, and if ever I had dared to—”

“Stop!” Such molten rage sounded in the one rapped-out word that Gerard quailed. Rotherham was no longer lounging in his chair, and there was no vestige of amusement in his face. It wore instead so unpleasant an expression that Gerard’s heart began to thud violently, and he felt rather sick. Rotherham was leaning forward, one hand on his desk, and clenched hard. “Have I ever held that threat over your head?” he demanded. “Answer me!”

“No!” Gerard said, his voice jumping nervously. “No, but—but I knew it was you who sent me to Eton, and now Ch-Charlie as well, and—”

“Did I tell you so?”

“No,” Gerard muttered, quite unable to meet those brilliant, angry eyes. “My mother—”

“Then how dare you speak to me like that, you insufferable cub?” Rotherham said sternly.

Scarlet-faced, Gerard faltered: “I—I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean—Of course, I am excessively grateful to you, C-Cousin Rotherham!”

“If I had wanted your damned gratitude I should have told you that I had taken upon myself the charge of your education! I don’t want it!”

Gerard cast a fleeting look up at him. “I’m glad you don’t! To know that I’m beholden to you—now!”

“Make yourself easy! You owe me nothing—any of you! I have done nothing for you!” Gerard looked up again, startled. “That surprises you, does it? Do you imagine that I cared the snap of my fingers how or where you were educated? You were wonderfully wrong! All I cared for was that your father’s sons should be educated as he was, and as he would have wished them to be! Anything I’ve chosen to do has been for him, not for you!”

Crestfallen, and considerably shaken, Gerard stammered: “I—I didn’t know! I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to say—to say what I did say, precisely!”

“Very well,” Rotherham said curtly.

“I didn’t really think you would—”

“Oh, that will do, that will do!”

“Yes, but—I lost my temper! I shouldn’t have—”

Rotherham gave a short laugh. “Well, I must be the last man alive not to pardon you for that! Have you come to the end of your catalogue of my past crimes? What is my present offence?”

Mr Monksleigh, having been obliged to offer his guardian an apology, now found it extremely difficult to hurl his culminating accusation at him with anything approaching the passion requisite to convince him of the magnitude of the charge, and of his own desperate sincerity. He had been forced into a position of disadvantage, and the knowledge of this filled him with annoyance rather than with noble rage. He said sulkily: “You have ruined my life!”

It had sounded better, when he had uttered it in the Green Saloon. If Rotherham had been privileged to have heard it then, it would have shocked him out of his scornful indifference, and might even have penetrated his marble heart, and touched him with remorse. It certainly would not have amused him, which was the only effect it appeared now to have upon him. Venturing to steal a glance at him, Gerard saw that he was faintly smiling. The relaxing of his face from its appalling grimness, the quenching of the menacing glitter in his eyes, enabled Gerard to breathe much more easily, but did nothing to endear his guardian to him. Flushing angrily, he said: “You think that ridiculous, I daresay!”

“Damned ridiculous!”

“Yes! Because you have no more sensibility yourself than—than a stone, you think others have none!”

“On the contrary! I am continually being sickened by the excessive sensibility displayed by so many persons of my acquaintance. But that is beside the point! Don’t keep me in suspense! How have I so unexpectedly achieved what you are persuaded has been my object for years?”

“I never said that! I daresay you may not have intended to destroy all my hopes! I can readily believe you never so much as thought of what must be my sensations when I heard—when I discovered—”

“Do try to cultivate a more orderly mind!” interposed Rotherham. The very fact that I take a malicious pleasure in thwarting you shows intention. I ought to have sent you to Oxford, after all. Clearly, they don’t make you study Logic at Cambridge.”

“Oh, damn you, be quiet!” exclaimed Gerard. “You think me a child, to be roasted and sneered at, but I am not!” His under-lip quivered; angry tears sprang to his eyes. He brushed them away, saying in a breaking voice: “You did not even tell me—! You left me to discover it, weeks afterwards, when you must have known—you must have known the shock—the c-crushing blow it would be to me—!” His pent-up emotions choked him. He gave a gasp, and buried his face in his hands.

Rotherham’s brows snapped together. He stared at Gerard for a moment, and then rose, and walked across the room to where a side-table stood, bearing upon it several decanters and glasses. He filled two of the glasses, and returned with them, setting one down upon his desk. He dropped a hand on Gerard’s shoulder, gripping it not unkindly. “Enough! Come, now! I’ve told you I don’t like an excess of sensibility! No, I am not roasting you: I see that things are more serious than I had supposed. Here’s some wine for you! Drink it, and then tell me without any more nonsense what it is that I have done to upset you so much!”

The words were scarcely sympathetic, but the voice, although unemotional, was no longer derisive. Gerard said thickly: “I don’t want it! I—”

“Do as I bid you!”

The voice had sharpened. Gerard responded to it involuntarily, starting a little. He took the glass in his unsteady hand, and gulped down some of its contents. Rotherham retired again to his chair behind the large desk, and picked up his own glass. “Now, in as few words as possible, what is it?”

“You know what it is,” Gerard said bitterly. “You used your rank—and your wealth—to steal from me the only girl I could ever care for!” He perceived that Rotherham was staring at him with sudden intentness, and added: “Miss Laleham!”

“Good God!”

The ejaculation held blank astonishment, but Gerard said: “You knew very well—must have known!—that I—that she—”

“No doubt!—had I half the interest in your affairs with which you credit me! Asit is, I did not know.” He paused, and sipped his wine, looking at Gerard over the rim of the glass, his brows frowning again, the eyes beneath them narrowed, very hard and bright. “It would have made no difference, except that I should have informed you of the event. I am sorry, if the news came as a blow to you, but at your age you will very speedily recover from it.”