"No, no," he went on sternly, shaking his head and frowning. "I'll have my say for once, and then for ever keep silence. This is the first and last time as long as we both live I will speak with you on the subject. So we may as well understand one another, once and for ever. For my mother's sake, as I said, there need be just at present no open disclosure. You have years to live yet; and as long as you live, these Waring people have no claim upon the estate in any way. You've given them as much as they've any right to expect. Let them wait for the rest till, in the course of nature, they come into possession. As for me, I will go to carve out for myself a place in the world elsewhere by my own exertions. Perhaps, before my mother need know her son was left a beggar by the father who brought him up like the heir to a large estate, I may have been able to carve out that place for myself so well that she need never really feel the difference. I'm a Kelmscott, and can fight the world on my own account. But, in any case, I must go. Tilgate's no longer a fit home for me. I leave it to those who have a better right to it." He rose as if to depart, with the air of a man who sets forth upon the world to seek his fortune. Colonel Kelmscott rose too, and faced him, all broken. "Granville," he said, in a voice scarcely audible through the stifled sobs he was too proud to give vent to, "you're not going like this. You're not going without at least shaking hands with your father! You're not going without saying good-bye to your mother!" Granville turned, with hot tears standing dim in his eyes--like his father, he was too proud to let them trickle down his cheek--and taking the Colonel's weather-beaten hand in his, wrung it silently for some minutes with profound emotion. Then he looked at the white moustache, the grizzled hair, the bright brown eyes suffused with answering dimness, and said, almost remorsefully, "Father, good-bye. You meant me well, no doubt. You thought you were befriending me. But I wish to Heaven in my soul you had meant me worse. It would have been easier for me to bear in the end. If you'd brought me up as a nobody--as a younger son's accustomed--" He paused and drew back, for he could see his words were too cruel for that proud man's heart. Then he broke off suddenly. "But I CAN'T say good-bye to my mother," he went on, with a piteous look. "If I tried to say good-bye to her, I must tell her all. I'd break down in the attempt. I'll write to her from the Cape. It'll be easier so. She won't feel it so much then." "From the Cape!" Colonel Kelmscott exclaimed, drawing back in horror. "Oh, Granville, don't tell me you're going away from us to Africa!"