ntil now; and putting his two hands
over his face, he sobbed out--groaned even with agony--until the tears
literally gushed in torrents through his fingers. "I thought to have
added shame to all I shall make them suffer," he exclaimed; "but in that
I am frustrated." He here naturally clenched his hands and gnashed his
teeth, like a man in the last stage of madness.

On removing his hands, too, his face, now terribly distorted out of
its lineaments by the convulsive workings of this tremendous passion,
presented an appearance which one might rather suppose to have been
shaped in hell, so unnaturally savage and diabolical were all its
outlines.

Phil, who had sat down at the same time, with his face to the back of
the chair, on which his two hands were placed, supporting his chin, kept
his beautiful eyes, seated as he was in that graceful attitude, fixed
upon his father with a good deal of surprise. Indeed it would be a
difficult thing, considering their character and situation, to find
two countenances more beautifully expressive of their respective
dispositions. If one could conceive the existence of any such thing as a
moral looking-glass placed between them, it might naturally be supposed
that Val, in looking at Phil, saw himself; and that Phil in his virtuous
father's face also saw his own. The son's face and character, however,
had considerably the advantage over his father's. Val's presented merely
what you felt you must hate, even to abhorrence; but the son's, that
which you felt to be despicable besides, and yet more detestable still.

"Well," said Phil, "all I can say is, that upon my honor, my worthy
father, I don't think you shine at the pathetic. Damn it, be a man, and
don't snivel in that manner, just like a furious drunken woman, when
she can't get at another drunken woman who is her enemy. Surely if we
failed, it wasn't our faults; but I think I can console you so far as
to say we did not fail. It's not such an easy thing to suppress scandal,
especially if it happens to be a lie, as it is in the present case."

"Ah," said the father with bitterness, "it was all your fault, you
ill-looking Bubber-lien. (*An ignorant, awkward booby.) At your age,
your grandfather would not have had to complain of want of success."

"Come, M'Clutchy--I'll not bear this--it's cursed ungenerous in you,
when you know devilish well how successful I have been on the property."

"Ay," said Val, "and what was the cause of that?