"Granville," he said slowly, like a broken man, "I don't ask you to
forgive me; you can never forgive me; I don't ask you to sympathise
with me; a father knows better than to accept sympathy from a son;
but I do ask you to bear with me while I try to explain myself."
He braced himself up, and with many long pauses, and many inarticulate
attempts to set forth the facts in the least unfavourable aspect,
told his story all through, in minute detail, to that hardest of
all critics, his own dispossessed and disinherited boy.
"If you're hard upon me, Granville," he cried at last as he finished,
looking wistfully for pity into his son's face, "you should remember,
at least, it was for your sake I did it, my boy; it was for your
sake I did it--yours, yours, and your mother's."
Granville let him relate his whole story in full to the bitter
end, though it was with difficulty at times that that proud and
grey-haired man nerved himself up to tell it. Then, as soon as
all was told, he looked in his father's face once more, and said
slowly, with the pitilessness of sons in general towards the faults
and failings of their erring parents--
"It's not my place to blame you, I know. You did it, I suppose, as
you say so, for me and my mother.
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