It certainly was infuriating that a youth, admitted to partnership barely three years ago, should thus maltreat his associates.  Ingrate was precisely the epithet for him.  At least, so they honestly thought, after the quaint human fashion; for, because they had given him the partnership, they looked on themselves as his benefactors, and neglected as unimportant detail the sole and entirely selfish reason for their graciousness.  But enraged though these worthy gentlemen were, and eagerly though they longed to treat the “conceited and grasping upstart” as he richly deserved, they accepted his ultimatum.  Even the venerable and venerated Lockyer—­than whom a more convinced self-deceiver on the subject of his own virtues never wore white whiskers, black garments, and the other badges of eminent respectability—­even old Joseph Lockyer could not twist the acceptance into another manifestation of the benevolence of himself and his associates.  They had to stare the grimacing truth straight in the face; they were yielding because they dared not refuse.  To refuse would mean the departure of Norman with the firm’s most profitable business.  It costs heavily to live in New York; the families of successful men are extravagant; so conduct unbecoming a gentleman may not there be resented if to resent is to cut down one’s income.  The time was, as the dignified and nicely honorable Sanders observed, when these and many similar low standards did not prevail in the legal profession.  But such is the frailty of human nature—­or so savage the pressure of the need of the material necessities of civilized life, let a profession become profitable or develop possibilities of profit—­even the profession of statesman, even that of lawyer—­or doctor—­or priest—­or wife—­and straightway it begins to tumble down toward the brawl and stew of the market place.

In a last effort to rouse the gentleman in Norman or to shame him into pretense of gentlemanliness, Lockyer expostulated with him like a prophet priest in full panoply of saintly virtue.  And Lockyer was passing good at that exalted gesture.  He was a Websterian figure, with the venality of the great Daniel in all its pompous dignity modernized—­and correspondingly expanded.  He abounded in those idealist sonorosities that are the stock-in-trade of all solemn old-fashioned frauds.  The young man listened with his wonted attentive courtesy until the dolorous appeal disguised as fatherly counsel came to an end.  Then in his blue-gray eyes appeared the gleam that revealed the tenacity and the penetration of his mind.  He said: 

“Mr. Lockyer, you have been absent six years—­except an occasional two or three weeks—­absent as American Ambassador to France.  You have done nothing for the firm in that time.  Yet you have not scorned to take profits you did not earn.  Why should I scorn to take profits I do earn?”

Mr. Lockyer shook his picturesque head in sad remonstrance at this vulgar, coarse, but latterly frequent retort of insurgent democracy upon indignant aristocracy.  But he answered nothing.