Sir Richard looked at him with searching eyes. "How?" he asked. "What would you have me understand ?"

"That in spite of all that has been said between us, in spite of all the arguments you have employed, and with which once, for a little while, you convinced me, this task is loathsome to me in the last degree. Ostermore is my father, and I can't forget it."

"And your mother?" Sir Richard's tone was sad, rather than indignant; it spoke of a bitter disappointment, not at the events, but at this man whom he loved with all a father's love.

"It were idle to go over it all again. I know everything that you would - that you could - say. I have said it all to myself again and again, in a vain endeavor to steel myself to the business to which you plighted me. Had Ostermore been different, perhaps it had been easier. I cannot say. As it is, I see in him a weakling, a man of inferior intellect, who does not judge things as you and I judge them, whose life cannot have been guided by the rules that serve for men of stronger purpose."