school last Christmas, my mother, for the first time, told me the extent of my obligations to this benefactor, and informed me that he wished to know my own choice as to a profession—that if I preferred Church or Bar, he would maintain me at college."
Vance. "Body o' me! where's the sting to that? Help yourself to toddy, my boy, and take more genial views of life."
Lionel. "You have not heard me out. I then asked to see my benefactor's letters; and my mother, unconscious of the pain she was about to inflict, showed me not only the last one, but all she had received from him. Oh, Vance, they were terrible, those letters! The first began by a dry acquiescence in the claims of kindred—a curt proposal to pay my schooling, but not one word of kindness, and a stern proviso that the writer was never to see nor hear from me. He wanted no gratitude—he disbelieved in all professions of it. His favors would cease if I molested him. 'Molested' was the word; it was bread thrown to a dog."
Vance. "Tut! Only a rich man's eccentricity. A bachelor, I presume?"
Lionel. "My mother says he has been married, and is a widower."
Vance. "Any children?"
Lionel. "My mother says none living; but I know little or nothing about his family."
Vance looked with keen scrutiny into the face of his boy-friend, and, after a pause, said, dryly—"Plain as a pikestaff. Your relation is one of those men who, having no children, suspect and dread the attention of an heir-presumptive; and what has made this sting, as you call it, keener to you, is—pardon me—is in some silly words of your mother, who, in showing you the letters, has hinted to you that that heir you might be, if you were sufficiently pliant and subservient. Am I not right?"
Lionel hung his head, without reply.
Vance (cheeringly). "So, so; no great harm as yet. Enough of the first letter. What was the last?"
Lionel. "Still more offensive. He, this kinsman, this patron, desired my mother to spare him those references to her son's ability and promise, which, though natural to herself, had slight interest to him—him, the condescending benefactor!—As to his opinion, what could I care for the opinion of one I had never seen? All that could sensibly affect my—oh, but I cannot go on with those cutting phrases, which imply but this, 'All I can care for is the money of a man who insults me while he gives it.'"
