"On the contrary, he hurried me off. When the news of Jan's accident arrived, and I went to my uncle with the message, he said to me--I remember his very words--'Go off at once; don't lose an instant,' and he handed me money for the journey and for my stay; for Jan, also, should any great expense be needed for him; and in an hour I was away on my route. I stayed six months in Paris, as you may remember--the latter portion of the time for my own pleasure. When I did return home, I was perfectly thunderstruck at the change in my uncle's appearance, and at the change in his manners to me. He was a bowed, broken man, with--as it seemed to me--some care upon his mind; and that I had offended him in some very unfortunate way, and to a great extent, was palpable. I never could get any solution to it, though I asked him repeatedly. I do not know, to this hour, what I had done. Sometimes I thought he was angry at my remaining so long away; but, if so, he might have given me a hint to return, or have suffered some one else to give it, for he never wrote to me." "Never wrote to you?" repeated Mr. Bitterworth. "Not once, the whole of the time I was away. I wrote to him often; but if he had occasion to send me a message, Mrs. Verner or Fred Massingbird would write it. Of course, this will, disinheriting me, proves that my staying away could not have been the cause of displeasure--it is dated only the week after I went." "Whatever may have been the cause, it is a grievous wrong inflicted on you. He was my dear friend, and we have but now returned from laying him in his grave, but still I must speak out my sentiments--that he had _no right_ to deprive you of Verner's Pride." Lionel knit his brow. That he thought the same; that he was feeling the injustice as a crying and unmerited wrong, was but too evident. Mr. Bitterworth had bent his head in a reverie, stealing a glance at Lionel now and then. "Is there nothing that you can charge your conscience with; no sin, which may have come to the knowledge of your uncle, and been deemed by him a just cause for disinheritance?" questioned Mr. Bitterworth, in a meaning tone. "There is nothing, so help me Heaven!" replied Lionel, with emotion. "No sin, no shame; nothing that could be a cause, or the shade of a cause--I will not say for depriving me of Verner's Pride, but even for my uncle's displeasure."