"If after reading the papers you choose to destroy them, no one will blame you; no one will know--you will do no one an injury. You are free to act as you choose."
And Armstrong, the only other being who had seen the papers, had urged him to avail himself of the permission thus accorded. Why not take the advice and save Maxfield and the family name, and himself--ay, and Rosalind--from the discredit that threatened. He could yet be generous, beyond his hopes, to the prodigal. He would pay to get him abroad, to-- to--
A flush of shame mounted to the boy's cheeks as he suddenly discovered himself listening to these unworthy suggestions.
"Heaven help me," he said, "to be a man." It was a brief inward fight, though a sore one.
Roger Ingleton, weak in body, often dull of wit and infirm of temper, had yet certain old-fashioned ideas of his own as to how it behoves a gentleman to act.
He cherished, too, certain still older-fashioned ideas as to how when a Christian gentleman wants help and courage he may obtain it. And he was endowed with that glorious obstinacy which, when it once satisfies itself on a question of right and wrong, declines to listen to argument.
Therefore when, later than usual, he joined the family party at breakfast, it was with a grim sense of a misery ahead to be faced, but by no manner of means to be avoided.
For fear the reader should be disposed to rank Roger at once among the saints, let it be added that he took his place in as genuine a bad temper as a strong mind and a weak body between them are capable of generating.
"Roger, my dear boy," said the captain mournfully, as became the weeds he wore, "you are looking poorly. You need a change. We both need one after the trouble we have been through. I think a run up to London would brace us up. Would you like it?"
"I don't know," said Roger shortly. "I don't think so."
"It is trying to you, I am sure, to remain here, in your delicate health, among so many sad associations--"
"I'm quite well, thank you," said the boy. "Tom, how does the football get on?"
"Oh," said Tom, rather taken aback by the introduction of so congenial a theme from so unexpected a quarter, "I've not played very much lately. Jill and I had a little punt about yesterday; but we did it quite slowly, you know, and I had my crape on my arm."