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great window, in an attitude suggestive of respectful attention to what his father is saying and equally respectful dissent from the positions and arguments offered. The father walks the floor as he talks, and his talk shows that his temper is away up toward summer heat. "Soft-spirited as you are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,) wasted upon you--yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command as well. To my mind--" "Father, if you will look at it without prejudice, without passion, you must concede that I am not doing a rash thing, a thoughtless, wilful thing, with nothing substantial behind it to justify it. I did not create the American claimant to the earldom of Rossmore; I did not hunt for him, did not find him, did not obtrude him upon your notice. He found himself, he injected himself into our lives--" "And has made mine a purgatory for ten years with his tiresome letters, his wordy reasonings, his acres of tedious evidence,--" "Which you would never read, would never consent to read. Yet in common fairness he was entitled to a hearing. That hearing would either prove he was the rightful earl--in which case our course would be plain--or it would prove that he wasn't--in which case our course would be equally plain. I have read his evidences, my lord. I have conned them well, studied them patiently and thoroughly. The chain seems to be complete, no important link wanting. I believe he is the rightful earl." "And I a usurper--a--nameless pauper, a tramp! Consider what you are saying, sir." "Father, if he is the rightful earl, would you, could you--that fact being established--consent to keep his titles and his properties from him a day, an hour, a minute?" "You are talking nonsense--nonsense--lurid idiotcy! Now, listen to me. I will make a confession--if you wish to call it by that name. I did not read those evidences because I had no occasion to--I was made familiar with them in the time of this claimant's father and of my own father forty years ago. This fellow's predecessors have kept mine more or less familiar with them for close upon a hundred and fifty years. The truth is, the rightful heir did go to America, with the Fairfax heir or about the same time--but disappeared--somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, got married, e
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