Nevertheless I quickened my pace without any distinct motive, and was
soon at the house. I will not dwell on the scene I found there. My
brother was dead--had been pitched from his horse, and killed on the spot
by a concussion of the brain.

I went up to the room where he lay, and where my father was seated beside
him with a look of rigid despair. I had shunned my father more than any
one since our return home, for the radical antipathy between our natures
made my insight into his inner self a constant affliction to me. But
now, as I went up to him, and stood beside him in sad silence, I felt the
presence of a new element that blended us as we had never been blent
before. My father had been one of the most successful men in the money-
getting world: he had had no sentimental sufferings, no illness. The
heaviest trouble that had befallen him was the death of his first wife.
But he married my mother soon after; and I remember he seemed exactly the
same, to my keen childish observation, the week after her death as
before. But now, at last, a sorrow had come--the sorrow of old age,
which suffers the more from the crushing of its pride and its hopes, in
proportion as the pride and hope are narrow and prosaic. His son was to
have been married soon--would probably have stood for the borough at the
next election. That son's existence was the best motive that could be
alleged for making new purchases of land every year to round off the
estate. It is a dreary thing onto live on doing the same things year
after year, without knowing why we do them. Perhaps the tragedy of
disappointed youth and passion is less piteous than the tragedy of
disappointed age and worldliness.

As I saw into the desolation of my father's heart, I felt a movement of
deep pity towards him, which was the beginning of a new affection--an
affection that grew and strengthened in spite of the strange bitterness