‘Palter such trash to coward fools!—­I want none of your priestcraft,’ returned the nobleman.  ’Do I not know the reason of all this affected love for justice and mercy.  Your grand-daughter was to have married this midnight robber—­they were betrothed, or some such trash.  Find him—­doubtless she knows how—­let them marry—­such a son-in-law will be an honor to your family, and a comfort to your declining years.’

’Your insinuations and your sneers fall as harmless upon me as your threats,’ said the steward with dignity.  ’I am eighty-nine, and shall soon be beyond them:  but when you brand with undeserved infamy one who never injured you—­when you accuse my innocent grandchild of being privy to the concealment of a midnight robber, as you but now called the unhappy man whom your ill-usage, whom your misdeeds drove from a happy home and honorable course of life, you commit an action, only equalled in its baseness, by its cowardice!’

The Earl started up, purple with rage.  For a moment, he seemed about to strike the aged form before him.  He paused, however, and stood regarding him with clenched hands and furious look, and every evil passion glaring from his eyes.  The steward moved not one inch, but confronted him in the majesty of venerable age.

The agent paused not for one moment in his task, but quietly labelling and tying up a pile of documents, placed it in its proper pigeon hole, and went on with methodical exactness to the next.  They were a strange group.  The man of business in his chair, pursuing his work as if no other were present, but observing all that took place nevertheless; the nobleman in the prime of glorious manhood, noble, as far as physical beauty could go; handsome, rich, accomplished, intellectual, but distorted as that face was now, in his rage, ugly, hideous in the extreme as he gazed upon the calm face slightly flushed with virtuous indignation, the spare form and silver locks of the aged man who dared to stand between him and the victims of his wrath.

Gradually the face of the nobleman became calmer, one by one the lines of passion disappeared and an expression of cold sarcasm took possession of his features; he threw himself into his chair and turned to the agent.

’Mr. Lambert, be pleased to pay particular attention to my orders, that is if your nerves are not too much discomposed by the exciting piece of eloquence Mr. Waters has just favored us with for my especial benefit.  Gad!  Waters, you’d do the heavy fathers finely on the stage.  I’ll write to Davidge for you, that last speech of yours was capital; couldn’t you favor us with a finishing touch, we are all attention.’  The agent placed his papers on the table, and wheeling his chair round, sat in imitation of his master as if in expectation of hearing some rich joke.

The single word ‘God!’ escaped the steward as he turned to leave the room; he gave one glance around as if for the last time looking on those familiar objects, cast a sorrowful glance at his master, and was about to quit, when his eye was arrested by a picture; it was that of frank and noble boy in the pride of youth and beauty, his face ruddy with exercise, his eye bright with intellect.  It was a portrait of the Earl when a boy.