I tore myself from the rectory and hurried up to town with the diligence and assiduity of an only son and heir summoned on an occasion so solemn.
I found my ancestor still in the possession of his senses, though given over by the physicians; a circumstance that proved a degree of disinterestedness and singleness of purpose on their part that was scarcely to be expected towards a patient who it was commonly believed was worth more than a million.

My reception by the servants and by the two or three friends who had assembled on this melancholy occasion, too, was sympathizing, warm, and of a character to show their solicitude and forethought.
My reception by the sick man was less marked.

The total abstraction of his faculties in the one great pursuit of his life; a certain sternness of purpose which is apt to get the ascendant with those who are resolute to gain, and which usually communicates itself to the manners; and an absence of those kinder ties that are developed by the exercise of the more familiar charities of our existence had opened a breach between us that was not to be filled by the simple unaided fact of natural affinity.

I say of natural affinity, for notwithstanding the doubts that cast their shadows on that branch of my genealogical tree by which I was connected with my maternal grandfather, the title of the king to his crown is not more apparent than was my direct lineal descent from my father.

I always believed him to be my ancestor de jure as well as de facto, and could fain have loved him and honored him as such had my natural yearnings been met with more lively bowels of sympathy on his side.
Notwithstanding the long and unnatural estrangement that had thus existed between the father and son, the meeting on the present occasion was not entirely without some manifestations of feeling.
"Thou art come at last, Jack," said my ancestor; "I was afraid, boy, thou might'st be too late." The difficult breathing, haggard countenance, and broken utterance of my father struck me with awe.