This last attack of his father's would widen the breach between them, for she would never overlook this last stigma when she heard of it, as she certainly must.

Nobody would then be left on his side except his dear mother, the old house servants, and St.George, and of these St.George alone could be of any service to him.
It had all been so horrible too, and so undeserved--worse than anything he had ever dreamed of; infinitely worse than the night he had been driven from Moorlands.

Never in all his life had he shown his father anything but obedience and respect; furthermore, he had loved and admired him; loved his dash and vigor; his superb physique for a man of his years--some fifty odd--loved too his sportsmanlike qualities--not a man in the county was his equal in the saddle, and not a man in his own or any other county could handle the ribbons so well.

If his father had not agreed with him as to when and where he should teach a vulgarian manners, that had been a question about which gentlemen might differ, but to have treated him with contempt, to insult him in public, leaving him no chance to defend himself--force him, really, into a position which made it impossible for him to strike back--was altogether a different thing, and for that he would never, never forgive him.
Then a strange thing happened in the boy's mind.

It may have been the shifting of a grain of gray matter never called into use before; or it may have been due to some stranded red corpuscle which, dislodged by the pressure he had lately been called upon to endure, had rushed headlong through his veins scouring out everything in its way until it reached his thinking apparatus.