Book 6 - Chapter 8 - Page 2

fixing his eyes with a growing
look of suspicion on the larger picture.

"Miss Tulliver. The small one is something like what she was when I
was at school with her brother at King's Lorton; the larger one is not
quite so good a likeness of what she was when I came from abroad."

Wakem turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting his
eye-glass fall, and looking at his son with a savage expression for a
moment, as if he was ready to strike that daring feebleness from the
stool. But he threw himself into the armchair again, and thrust his
hands into his trouser-pockets, still looking angrily at his son,
however. Philip did not return the look, but sat quietly watching the
point of his pencil.

"And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with
her since you came from abroad?" said Wakem, at last, with that vain
effort which rage always makes to throw as much punishment as it
desires to inflict into words and tones, since blows are forbidden.

"Yes; I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father's
death. We met often in that thicket--the Red Deeps--near Dorlcote
Mill. I love her dearly; I shall never love any other woman. I have
thought of her ever since she was a little girl."

"Go on, sir! And you have corresponded with her all this while?"

"No. I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she
promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me. I
am not sure that she loves me or would consent to marry me. But if she
would consent,--if she _did_ love me well enough,--I should marry
her."

"And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I've
heaped on you?" said Wakem, getting white, and beginning to tremble
under an enraged sense of impotence before Philip's calm defiance and
concentration of purpose.

"No, father," said Philip, looking up at him for the first time; "I
don't regard it as a return. You have been an indulgent father to me;
but I have always felt that it was because you had an affectionate
wish to give me as much happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit,
not that it was a debt you expected me to pay by sacrificing all my
chances of happiness to satisfy feelings of yours which I can never
share."

"I think most sons would share their father's feelings in this case,"
said Wakem, bitterly. "The girl's father was an ignorant mad brute,
who was within an inch of murdering me. The whole town knows it. And
the brother is just as insolent, only in a cooler way. He forbade her
seeing you, you say; he'll break every bone in your body, for your
greater happiness, if you don't take care. But you seem to have made
up your mind; you have counted the consequences, I suppose.