Verily, there’s some virtue left in me yet.  I believe I almost blushed.

“Why didn’t I know you ten years ago?” the old man went on.  “There are ten years lost.”

“Ten years ago I was not worth your knowing,” Max remarked.

“But I did know you!” cried the bonhomme.  “I knew you in knowing your mother.”

Ah! my mother again.  When the old man begins that chapter I feel like telling him to blow out his candle and go to bed.

“At all events,” he continued, “we must make the most of the years that remain.  I am a rotten old carcass, but I have no intention of dying.  You won’t get tired of me and want to go away?”

“I am devoted to you, sir,” I said.  “But I must be looking for some occupation, you know.”

“Occupation? bother!  I’ll give you occupation.  I’ll give you wages.”

“I am afraid that you will want to give me the wages without the work.”  And then I declared that I must go up and look at poor Theodore.

The bonhomme still kept my hands.  “I wish very much that I could get you to be as fond of me as you are of poor Theodore.”

“Ah, don’t talk about fondness, Mr. Sloane.  I don’t deal much in that article.”

“Don’t you like my secretary?”

“Not as he deserves.”

“Nor as he likes you, perhaps?”

“He likes me more than I deserve.”

“Well, Max,” my host pursued, “we can be good friends all the same.  We don’t need a hocus-pocus of false sentiment.  We are men, aren’t we?—­men of sublime good sense.”  And just here, as the old man looked at me, the pressure of his hands deepened to a convulsive grasp, and the bloodless mask of his countenance was suddenly distorted with a nameless fear.  “Ah, my dear young man!” he cried, “come and be a son to me—­the son of my age and desolation!  For God’s sake, don’t leave me to pine and die alone!”

I was greatly surprised—­and I may add I was moved.  Is it true, then, that this dilapidated organism contains such measureless depths of horror and longing?  He has evidently a mortal fear of death.  I assured him on my honor that he may henceforth call upon me for any service.

8th.—­Theodore’s little turn proved more serious than I expected.  He has been confined to his room till to-day.  This evening he came down to the library in his dressing-gown.  Decidedly, Mr. Sloane is an eccentric, but hardly, as Theodore thinks, a “charming” one.  There is something extremely curious in his humors and fancies—­the incongruous fits and starts, as it were, of his taste.  For some reason, best known to himself, he took it into his head to regard it as a want of delicacy, of respect, of savoir-vivre—­of heaven knows what—­that poor Theodore, who is still weak and languid, should enter the sacred precinct of his study in the vulgar drapery of a dressing-gown.  The sovereign trouble with the bonhomme is