They too were relics
from the Spanish castle which Norman Westfall had stripped of its
ancient appurtenances to fashion an appropriate setting for the
beautiful young Spanish wife whose death at the birth of Diane had
goaded him to suicide. That Norman Westfall had regarded the vital
spark within him as an indifferent thing to be snuffed out at the will
of the clay it dominated, was consistent with the Westfall intolerance
of custom and convention.
By the fire Carl smoked and stared at the dying embers. For all his
insolent habit of dominance and mockery he was keenly sensitive and
to-night the significant defection of Starrett and Payson after months
of sycophantic friendship, had made him quiver inwardly like a hurt
child. Only Wherry had stayed with him when his career of reckless
expenditure had arrived at its inevitable goal of ruin.
There remained, financially, what? Barely four thousand a year in
securities so iron-bound by his mother's will that he could not touch
them.
Black resentment flamed hotly up in his heart at the memory of the
Westfall custom of willing the bulk of the great estate to the oldest
son. It had left his mother with a patrimony which Carl, inheriting,
had chosen contemptuously to regard as a dwarfish thing of gold
sufficient only for the heedless purchase of one flaming, brilliant
hour of life.
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