Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/28

 Vance, and I fear the pride you tell me to put under lock and key has the larger share of the merit you ascribe to better motives. Independent? No! I have never been so."

VANCE.—"Well, you depend on a parent: who, at seventeen does not?"

LIONEL.—"I did not mean my mother; of course, I could not be too proud to take benefits from her. But the truth is simply this—, my father had a relation, not very near, indeed,—a cousin, at about as distant a remove, I fancy, as a cousin well can be. To this gentleman my mother wrote when my poor father died; and he was generous, for it is he who paid for my schooling. I did not know this till very lately. I had a vague impression, indeed, that I had a powerful and wealthy kinsman who took an interest in me, but whom I had never seen."

VANCE.—"Never seen?"

LIONEL.—"No. And here comes the sting. On leaving school last Christmas, my mother, for the first time, told me the extent of my obligations to this benefactor, and informed me that he wished to know my own choice as to a profession,—that if I preferred Church or Bar, he would maintain me at college."

VANCE.—"Body o' me! where's the sting in that? Help yourself to toddy, my boy, and take more genial views of life."

LIONEL.—"You have not heard me out. I then asked to see my benefactor's letters; and my mother, unconscious of the pain she was about to inflict, showed me not only the last one, but all she had received from him. Oh, Vance, they were terrible, those letters! The first began by a dry acquiescence in the claims of kindred, a curt proposal to pay my schooling; but not one word of kindness, and a stern proviso that the writer was never to see nor hear from me. He wanted no gratitude; he disbelieved in all professions of it. His favours would cease if I molested him. 'Molested' was the word; it was bread thrown to a dog."

VANCE.—"Tut! Only a rich man's eccentricity. A bachelor, I presume?"

LIONEL.—"My mother says he has been married, and is a widower."

VANCE.—"Any children?"

LIONEL.—"My mother says none living; but I know little or nothing about his family."

Vance looked with keen scrutiny into the face of his boyfriend,