The father and son had been close companions, and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the best of a poor business.
At the prospect of losing his great motive Ralph lost indeed his one inspiration.

If they might die at the same time it would be all very well; but without the encouragement of his father's society he should barely have patience to await his own turn.

He had not the incentive of feeling that he was indispensable to his mother; it was a rule with his mother to have no regrets.

He bethought himself of course that it had been a small kindness to his father to wish that, of the two, the active rather than the passive party should know the felt wound; he remembered that the old man had always treated his own forecast of an early end as a clever fallacy, which he should be delighted to discredit so far as he might by dying first.

But of the two triumphs, that of refuting a sophistical son and that of holding on a while longer to a state of being which, with all abatements, he enjoyed, Ralph deemed it no sin to hope the latter might be vouchsafed to Mr.Touchett.
These were nice questions, but Isabel's arrival put a stop to his puzzling over them.