When he had time to think, Colonel Kelmscott determined in his
own mind that he would still do his best to save Granville, whether
Granville himself wished it or otherwise. So he proceeded to take
all the necessary steps for breaking the entail and raising the
money he needed for Guy and Cyril.
In all this, Granville neither acquiesced nor dissented. He
signed mechanically whatever documents his father presented to him,
and he stood by his bargain with a certain sullen, undeviating,
hard-featured loyalty; but he never forgot those few angry words
in which his father had half let out his long-guarded life secret.
Thinking the matter over continually with himself, however, he came
in the end to the natural conclusion that one explanation alone
would fit all the facts. He was not his father's eldest son at all.
Colonel Kelmscott must have been married to some one else before
his marriage with Lady Emily. That some one else's son was the
real heir of Tilgate. And it was to him that his father, in his
passionate penitence, proposed, after many years, to do one-sided
justice. Now Granville Kelmscott, though a haughty and somewhat
head-strong fellow, after the fashion of his race, was a young man
of principle and of honour.
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