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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: melancholy happiness.
To look on at this, what a torment it was for Mr. Henry! And yet
it brought our ultimate deliverance, as I am soon to tell.
The purport of the Master's stay was no more noble (gild it as they
might) than to wring money out. He had some design of a fortune in
the French Indies, as the Chevalier wrote me; and it was the sum
required for this that he came seeking. For the rest of the family
it spelled ruin; but my lord, in his incredible partiality, pushed
ever for the granting. The family was now so narrowed down
(indeed, there were no more of them than just the father and the
two sons) that it was possible to break the entail and alienate a
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