It was a strange meeting.  They seemed to have been separated so long.  The father took his son’s hand; they sat without a word passing between them.  Silence said most.  The boy did not understand his father:  his father frequently thwarted him:  at times he thought his father foolish:  but that paternal pressure of his hand was eloquent to him of how warmly he was beloved.  He tried once or twice to steal his hand away, conscious it was melting him.  The spirit of his pride, and old rebellion, whispered him to be hard, unbending, resolute.  Hard he had entered his father’s study:  hard he had met his father’s eyes.  He could not meet them now.  His father sat beside him gently; with a manner that was almost meekness, so he loved this boy.  The poor gentleman’s lips moved.  He was praying internally to God for him.

By degrees an emotion awoke in the boy’s bosom.  Love is that blessed wand which wins the waters from the hardness of the heart.  Richard fought against it, for the dignity of old rebellion.  The tears would come; hot and struggling over the dams of pride.  Shamefully fast they began to fall.  He could no longer conceal them, or check the sobs.  Sir Austin drew him nearer and nearer, till the beloved head was on his breast.

An hour afterwards, Adrian Harley, Austin Wentworth, and Algernon Feverel were summoned to the baronet’s study.

Adrian came last.  There was a style of affable omnipotence about the wise youth as he slung himself into a chair, and made an arch of the points of his fingers, through which to gaze on his blundering kinsmen.  Careless as one may be whose sagacity has foreseen, and whose benevolent efforts have forestalled, the point of danger at the threshold, Adrian crossed his legs, and only intruded on their introductory remarks so far as to hum half audibly at intervals,

     “Ripton and Richard were two pretty men,”

in parody of the old ballad.  Young Richard’s red eyes, and the baronet’s ruffled demeanour, told him that an explanation had taken place, and a reconciliation.  That was well.  The baronet would now pay cheerfully.  Adrian summed and considered these matters, and barely listened when the baronet called attention to what he had to say:  which was elaborately to inform all present, what all present very well knew, that a rick had been fired, that his son was implicated as an accessory to the fact, that the perpetrator was now imprisoned, and that Richard’s family were, as it seemed to him, bound in honour to do their utmost to effect the man’s release.

Then the baronet stated that he had himself been down to Belthorpe, his son likewise:  and that he had found every disposition in Blaize to meet his wishes.

The lamp which ultimately was sure to be lifted up to illumine the acts of this secretive race began slowly to dispread its rays; and, as statement followed statement, they saw that all had known of the business:  that all had been down to Belthorpe:  all save the wise youth Adrian, who, with due deference and a sarcastic shrug, objected to the proceeding, as putting them in the hands of the man Blaize.  His wisdom shone forth in an oration so persuasive and aphoristic that had it not been based on a plea against honour, it would have made Sir Austin waver.  But its basis was expediency, and the baronet had a better aphorism of his own to confute him with.