This would have ended quite differently--and he had fully intended it should--had not St.George, with his cursed officiousness, interfered with his plans.

For what he had really proposed to himself to do, on that spring morning when he had rolled up to the club in his coach, was to mount the steps, ignore his son at first, if he should run up against him--( and he had selected the very hour when he hoped he would run up against him)--and then, when the boy broke down, as he surely must, to forgive him like a gentleman and a Rutter, and this, too, before everybody.

Seymour would see it--Kate would hear of it, and the honor of the Rutters remain unblemished.
Moreover, this would silence once and for all those gabblers who had undertaken to criticise him for what they called his inhumanity in banishing this only son when he was only trying to bring up that child in the way he should go.

Matters seemed to be coming his way.

The failure of the Patapsco might be his opportunity.