In further
sign of the same, he made no inquiry into the matter--did not once
even question his father about it. If it was true, he did not want
to know it: he would treat his lack of proof as ignorance, and act
as with the innocence of ignorance! A fellow must take for granted
what was commonly believed! At last, and the last was not long in
arriving, he almost ceased to trouble himself about it.
His father laughed at his fear of failure with Arctura, but at times
contemplated the thing as an awful possibility--not that he loved
Forgue much. The only way fathers in sight of the grave can fancy
themselves holding on to the things they must leave, is in their
children; but lord Morven had a stronger and better reason for his
unrighteousness: in a troubled, self-reproachful way, he loved the
memory of their mother, and through her cared even for Forgue more
than he knew. They were also his own as much as if he had been
legally married to her! For the relation in which they stood to
society, he cared little so long as it continued undiscovered. He
enjoyed the idea of stealing a march on society, and seeing the sons
he had left at such a disadvantage behind him, ruffling it, in spite
of absurd law, with the foolish best. From the grave he would so
have his foot on the neck of his enemy Law!--he was one of the many
who can rejoice in even a stolen victory.
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