“She is such a pretty young lady,” said the elder man, “and any girl would feel it to miss the handsome young master for a husband.”

“Um!” assented the son.  “Well, I suppose she will miss the sight of him if her heart is set upon him, but there is many a young man nicer to my thinking, and not so proud in his ways.”

“Has he ever been unjust or overbearing to you, Nathan?” inquired the old man severely.

“Oh, no, he has been uncommonly civil, he would think it beneath him to be anything else.  I know the cut of him; if he had any spite he would take it out on a gentleman.  He thinks we are made of different clay from him.”  And the embryo republican threw back his shoulders impatiently.

“So we are,” returned the other, with the Englishman’s ingrained belief in caste; “but, to be sure, you feel it with some more than with others, with the young man more than with his father.  But I like it better than the softly way the Colonel has.  Stephen is more like his grandfather.”

“His grandfather!” echoed the son.  “Why, he was a—.”

“Hush!” cried the other so suddenly and sharply that if the word had been, uttered at all Stephen lost it, though, now he was listening eagerly enough.  “Do you remember you swore that you would never speak that word?”

“Well,” returned the young man in a sullen tone, “if I did, what harm in saying it here with not a soul but you around?  And my feeling is,” he went on, “that this broken-off wedding is a judgment for his grandfather’s—.”  He hesitated.

“When you learned it by accident, Nathan,” returned his father, “you swore to satisfy me, that you would never speak the word in connection with him.  Who knows what person may be round?” And he glanced cautiously about him.  Stephen half resolved to confront him and force him to tell this secret.  But the very quality in himself which the men had been discussing held him back until the opportunity had passed.  “No, I don’t want you to name it at all, Nathan.  That is what you swore,” continued the old man.

“You have said enough about it,” retorted the younger.  “I will keep my word, of course; you know that.”  His tone was loud with anger.

“Yes, yes, I know,” said his companion, “But, you see, I was fond of the young master if he was a bit wild; he was a fine, free gentleman, though he changed very much after this—­this accident and his coming over to the Colonies, which wasn’t no ways suited to him like London, only he found it a good place to get rich in.  You see, Nathan, it all happened this way; he told me about it his own self with tears in his eyes, as I might say, for his family,—­he—.”

But it was in vain that Stephen strained his ears, the voices that had not been drowned in the noise of footsteps had been growing fainter with distance, and now were lost altogether.