.

.
And then, with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his father disliked him.

Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been responsible for that miserable retort, "Am I to bind up your broken heart ?" Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael's announcement could not have been conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly disliked him.
That he was a continual monument of disappointment to his father he knew well, but never before had it been quite plainly shown him how essential an object of dislike he was.

And the grounds of the dislike were now equally plain--his father disliked him exactly because he was his father.

On the other hand, the last twenty-four hours had shown him that his mother loved him exactly because he was her son.