When Sam presented himself at Captain Farnham’s house the next morning, he was admitted by Budsey, who took him to the library and showed him the work he was to do.  The heat of the room had shrunk the wood of the heavy doors of carved oak so that the locks were all out of position.  Farnham was seated by his desk, reading and writing letters.  He did not look up as Sam entered, and paid no attention to the instructions Budsey was giving him.  For the first time in his life, Sleeny found that this neglect of his presence was vaguely offensive to him.  A week before, he would no more have thought of speaking to Farnham, or being spoken to by him, than of entering into conversation with one of the busts on the book-cases.  Even now he had no desire to talk with the proprietor of the house.  He had come there to do certain work which he was capable of doing well, and he preferred to do it and not be bothered by irrelevant gossip.  But, in spite of himself, he felt a rising of revolt in his heart, as he laid out his tools, against the quiet gentleman who sat with his back to him, engaged in his own work and apparently unconscious of Sleeny’s presence.  A week before, they had been nothing to each other, but now a woman had come between them, and there is no such powerful conductor in nature.  The quiet in which Farnham sat seemed full of insolent triumph to the luckless lover, and scraps of Offitt’s sounding nonsense went through his mind:  “A man is more than a money-bag”; “the laborer is the true gentleman”; but they did not give him much comfort.  Not until he became interested in his work did he recover the even beat of his pulse and the genuine workmanlike play of his faculties.  Then he forgot Farnham’s presence in his turn, and enjoyed himself in a rational way with his files and chisels and screwdrivers.

He had been at work for an hour at one door, and had finished it to his satisfaction, and sat down before another, when he heard the bell ring, and Budsey immediately afterward ushered a lady through the hall and into the drawing-room.  His heart stood still at the rustle of the dress,—­it sounded so like Maud’s; he looked over his shoulder through the open door of the library and saw, to his great relief, that there were two female figures taking their seats in the softly lighted room beyond.  One sat with her back to the light, and her features were not distinctly visible; the other was where he could see three-quarters of her face clearly relieved against the tapestry portiere.  There is a kind of beauty which makes glad every human heart that gazes on it, if not utterly corrupt and vile, and it was such a face as this that Sam Sleeny now looked at with a heart that grew happier as he gazed.  It was a morning face, full of the calm joy of the dawn, of the sweet dreams of youth untroubled by love, the face of Aurora before she met Tithonus.  From the little curls of gold on the low brow to the smile that hovered forever, half formed, on the softly curving lips and over the rounded chin, there was a light of sweetness, and goodness, and beauty, to be read of all men, and perhaps in God’s good time to be worshipped by one.