"Have I won your attention, lad? Another item I chance to recall--permit me, since you've mentioned the lady's name--have you caught the look of her eye as it rests upon the creature--how it follows him, runs to him, hangs upon him with sweet tenacity? Have you felt the glow in her voice as she speaks to him? A woman of the world, young, tender, romantic, stormed by this Galahad of the hills, who first wins her solicitude by his helplessness, and then, before the lady quite knows it, coerces her whole being by sheer masculine dominance. Ah, you haven't read that--only enough of it to puzzle you, perhaps enrage you. You haven't your father's eyes. I read it all in three glances: one at him and two at her. Decidedly, you've not your father's eyes." "Nor his love of many words. So that's the son of my mother, of the woman who failed to adore you after a brief but heroic effort?" "Likewise, I dare say, the lover of a woman who will henceforth fail to appraise you at anything like your extraordinary worth. Such blind things they are, eh, my boy? She regards the two of you superficially, _bien entendu_, and hence to your prejudice. There's a likeness between you, the same cast of face, even a likeness of voice, and your noses are identical--the nose of that woman--but the differences are all in his favor. You have grace of a drawing-room sort, a certain boudoir polish of manner, but his face is fresher, kinder, quicker of sympathy, more compelling, and there's that out-of-doors look in his eye, the look of readiness and power. You know what that sort of strength means with the pretty animals." "You speak bitterly--but then, you've competed with that sort." "My unhappy infant! You'd at least have found a barren sort of dignity in actual competition. As it is----" "You got her by a trick, I've heard, from the man who took her away from you when she'd found you out." "Tell that to your grandmother--it may help you out of some money." "Stop it, governor! I'll quit if you will. Come!" He spoke with a drop of the voice, and lifted a hand in appeal. "When you like--I've wasted no words." "It's true, all you've said? Grandmother knows?" "Thirty seconds later and I'd have had to bless the pair." "And now?" "It's safe for the present. She forgot. She'll remember to-morrow. I'd trust him back there then. She'd see only an obscene excrescence." "It's a pleasant situation!" "It's hellish! Can you imagine _my_ feelings? You've touched on them with your graceful, filial banter." "What will you do?"