But how changed the world looked to him since the time that looked so far away! He had the loveliest of letters from Barbara. Mr. Wingfold wrote occasionally, and Richard always answered them both as soon as his work would allow.

As soon as his son was gone, sir Wilton began to miss him. He wished first that the obstinacy of the rascal had not made it necessary to give him quite so sharp a lesson, and as the days and weeks passed he began to wish that he had not sent him away. He repented as much as was possible to him, and wished he had left the rascal to take his own way. He tried to understand how, always anxious to please him, the boy would yet not do as he said in such a trifle, especially when he had nothing to gain and everything to lose by his obstinacy. How could the fool make the Mansons a matter of his conscience? They were no business of his!

He pretended to himself that he had been born without a conscience. At the same time he knew very well that there were dusty compartments of his memory he preferred not to search in, knew very well he had done things which were wrong. If he had ever done a thing because he ought to do it, if he had ever abstained from doing a thing because he ought not to do it, he would have known he had a conscience. But because he did not obey his conscience, he would rather believe himself without one.

For the first time in his life he was possessed with a good longing—namely, the desire for his son. Twenty times a day he would be on the point of sending for Richard, but twenty times a day his pride stopped him. He grew visibly greyer, stooped more, and became irritable.

“If the rascal would but make an apology enough to satisfy a Frenchman, I would take him back!” he would say to himself over and over “But he’s such a chip off the old block—so infernally independent!”

A month after Richard’s expulsion, the baronet drove to the smithy and accused Simon of causing all the mischief. He must send the boy Manson away, he said. He would settle an annuity on the beggar. That done, Richard must make a suitable apology, and he would take him back.

Simon listened without a word.

“If you will not oblige me,” sir Wilton ended, “you shall not have another stroke of work from Mortgrange, and I will use my influence to drive you from the county.”