What could it be? What had he done? Something terrible in his youth—but what?
Mr. Harding tried to smooth his troubled conscience. The feelings of a parent were tossing and tormenting his spirit as they had never done before. Yet the feelings of a parent were apt to lead one to extremes—to a tender over-anxiety in his own case—to a bitter and relentless requital in that of the elder Daintree. Was the latter the first father who had deemed his son’s folly a crime, and never forgiven it? “A handful of wild oats,” thought Mr. Harding; it could be nothing worse.
But he did not think so in his heart, for Sir Emilius was notoriously no squeamish moralist himself; and then there were those flowers that had not been allowed to lie a single day on Lady Daintree’s grave.
Moreover, Mr. Harding had been granted lately some gleams of independent insight into the character of the younger Daintree; and these to his cost; yet he held his tongue.
He held his tongue to the last, and James Daintree sailed away the betrothed of Claire Harding, who was to follow him to Sydney in six months.
A year earlier Mr. Harding might have been tempted to keep silence for worldly reasons, for the sake of the connection—“my daughter, Lady Daintree”—and so forth. He was not himself a man of noble blood, but he loved the nobility, and had of late very nearly cut himself off from their smile for ever. The temptation, on worldly grounds alone, would have been strong enough the year before. Yet the father’s heart would have resisted it: he would have spoken out then, and acted, too, like an honest man. Now he did neither, because his mouth was stopped and his hands were tied by
