“I know what you mean,” said Mr Burton, with that sense of power that makes a man often brutal in the distinctness of both words and deeds. “You think, because you are my son, and perhaps a finer fellow than I ever was, that I’m bound to provide for all your caprices. Not at all. That’s not in the bond. It’s conceded by civilisation that a man should bring up his son according to his position, and help him to make the best of himself; but no more. Man to man, you’ve had all you had any right to from me, Gervase. You’ve too much good sense not to see that. I offer you a way of doing for yourself, and you reject it. Well--you’re a man, you say, and have a right to your choice. I don’t deny your right; but you can’t exercise that and have me to fall back upon too.” There was a pause. Mr Burton leant back in his chair with a mind satisfied, even triumphant. Either he had convinced his son, who would return to a consideration of the business part of the question with very different feelings; or else he had shaken off (decently, affectionately, kindly, but still shaken off) those claims which Gervase had made so undoubtingly, as if his father was bound to accept all his vagaries. In either way the position was very different from that of an hour ago, when the father had not even been able to let off the rage that possessed him, for fear of the calm and philosophic countenance, unsympathetic, and disapproving of any such vulgar outbursts, which Gervase had turned upon him. The young man’s troubled face was balm to his father’s soul. CHAPTER II.