y, whatever was between them, the
Major gave my father the title-deeds of this house and the demesne in
security for what he had borrowed. My father has them now, I mean," he
corrected himself, "they're in my office. He said they were for me--he
as good as gave them to me." Barty slowly turned a dusky red. He
thought of what his father had said of Mount Music, of Christian; the
arrogance, the hateful facetiousness; he had felt as if brutal hands
had been laid on a saint; even now, he shuddered in spirit as
remembrance came to him.

"Good God! Was that why they went away?" Larry said, with a horror
that scarcely permitted of speech. "Do you mean the place isn't theirs
any more?" He thought: "I wish he'd take his hand off my knee! Thank
God, I'm out of it!"

"It" meant marriage with the daughter and the sister of men who could
do such things.

Perhaps some telepathic vibration from that wave of repulsion reached
Barty.

"You needn't think I had anything to do with it," he muttered,
withdrawing his hand, "or ever will!" he added, as if to himself.

Larry remained silent; the car ground into the heavy river-gravel on
the sweep in front of the house, and ceased at the door that he had
not seen since that day of wrath when he had cast his cousins behind
him for ever.

CHAPTER XLII

Dr. Mangan's body was still lying on the door on which it had been
carried up from the river-bank. Kitchen chairs now supported it where
it lay, with its burden, between the high windows, in the desolate,
sheeted dining-room, surrounded by portraits of Talbots, and Lowrys,
and their collaterals, who would surely have considered the presence
of Francis Aloysius Mangan, dead or alive, as something of an
intrusion, not to say a liberty.

Old Evans opened the hall door, and silently led the two young men
through the hall, and opening the dining-room door, left them there.
They stood looking down on the Big Doctor in silence. The strong,
coarse face had taken on that aloof dignity, even splendour of
expression, that death can confer. The servants had covered all else
with a sheet; the soaked fur collar of the coat was turned up, and
made a pillow for the big, iron-grey head.

With a shaking hand Barty turned back the sheet. His father's thick,
powerful hands were crossed on his broad breast. The son stooped and
kissed them, humbly; then he replaced the sheet, and kissed the heavy
brow, from which all the marks of the turmoil of life