Then some idea of the old squire's scheme fell with a crushing weight of
anticipated sorrow on Augustus. In a moment it all occurred to him what
his father might do, what injuries he might inflict; and,--saddest of all
feelings,--there came the immediate reflection that it had all been
rendered possible by his own doings. With the conviction that so much
might be left away from him, there came also a farther feeling that,
after all, there was a chance that his father had invented the story of
his brother's illegitimacy, that Mountjoy was now free from debt, and
that Tretton, with all its belongings, might now go back to him. That
his father would do it if it were possible he did not doubt. From week
to week he had waited impatiently for his father's demise, and had
expected little or none of that mental activity which his father had
exercised. "What a fool he had been," he said to himself, sitting
opposite to Mountjoy, who in the vacancy of the moment had lighted
another cigar; "what an ass!" Had he played his cards better, had he
comforted and flattered and cosseted the old man, Mountjoy might have
gone his own way to the dogs. Now, at the best, Tretton would come to
him stripped of everything; and,--at the worst,--no Tretton would come to
him at all.
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