“You deceived me?” Hugh’s voice rose shrill and uncontrollable. “You knew you were deceiving me? You had no right, ’twas wickedness, ’twas—” “It was your mother’s wish.” The burst of angry words was choked in Hugh’s throat; with a little shudder of the shoulders he dropped his head upon his folded arms. “Will you tell me wherefore, sir?” he asked in a dull tone. “Because of the never-dying folly of woman,” Master Oldesworth replied, with a sudden fierce harshness of tone that made Hugh lift his head. He felt that, if the revelation of the letter had not made every other happening of that day commonplace, he would have been surprised at the sudden lack of control that made his grandfather’s sallow cheeks flush and his thin lips move. But in a moment Master Oldesworth was as calm of demeanor as before and his voice was quite colorless when he resumed: “Hear the truth at last, Hugh, and you, too, will have reason to curse the folly of womankind. She, your mother, my best-beloved daughter, was most wilful, even from a child. Though you have none of her look I have noted in you something of her rash temper. Her own impulse and desire must always be her guides, and well they guided her. For there came a swashbuckling captain of horse out of Germany, with a brisk tongue and an insolent bearing, for which that mad girl put all her love on him, worthless hackster though he was.” “’Tis my father whom you speak of so?” Hugh cried, with an involuntary clinching of the hands. “Your mother’s work again!” said Master Oldesworth with a flicker of a smile, that was half sad and half contemptuous. “She fled away from her father’s house to marry this swaggering rascal; she followed him into Germany; and there she found true all her kinsmen had told her of his worthlessness and wickedness. So she took her child and gladly came back to us again.” “She never uttered word of this to me,” Hugh maintained doggedly.