“Stop, Mr. Murray!  You must not, shall not use such language in my presence concerning one whom I love and revere above all other human beings!  How dare you malign that noble Christian, whose lips daily lift your name to God, praying for pardon and for peace?  Oh! how ungrateful, how unworthy you are of his affection and his prayers!”

She had interrupted him with an imperious wave of her hand, and stood regarding him with an expression of indignation and detestation.

“I neither possess nor desire his affection or his prayers.”

“Sir, you know that you do not deserve, but you most certainly have both.”

“How did you obtain your information?”

“Accidentally, when he was so surprised and grieved to hear that you had started on your long voyage to Oceanica.”

“He availed himself of that occasion to acquaint you with all my heinous sins, my youthful crimes and follies, my—­”

“No, sir! he told me nothing, except that you no longer loved him as in your boyhood; that you had become estranged from him; and then he wept, and added, ’I love him still; I shall pray for him as long as I live.’”

“Impossible!  You can not deceive me!  In the depths of his heart he hates and curses me.  Even a brooding dove—­pshaw!  Allan Hammond is but a man, and it would be unnatural—­utterly impossible that he could still think kindly of his old pupil.  Impossible!”

Mr. Murray rose and stood before the grate with his face averted, and his companion seized the opportunity to say in a low, determined tone: 

“Of the causes that induced your estrangement I am absolutely ignorant.  Nothing has been told me, and it is a matter about which I have conjectured little.  But, sir, I have seen Mr. Hammond every day for four years, and I know what I say when I tell you that he loves you as well as if you were his own son.  Moreover, he—­”

“Hush! you talk of what you do not understand.  Believe in him if you will, but be careful not to chant his praises in my presence; not to parade your credulity before my eyes, if you do not desire that I shall disenchant you.  Just now you are duped—­so was I at your age.  Your judgment slumbers, experience is in its swaddling-clothes; but I shall bide my time, and the day will come ere long when these hymns of hero-worship shall be hushed, and you stand clearer-eyed, darker-hearted, before the mouldering altar of your god of clay.”

“From such an awakening may God preserve me!  Even if our religion were not divine, I should clasp to my heart the system and the faith that make Mr. Hammond’s life serene and sublime.  Oh! that I may be ‘duped’ into that perfection of character which makes his example beckon me ever onward and upward.  If you have no gratitude, no reverence left, at least remember the veneration with which I regard him, and do not in my hearing couple his name with sneers and insults.”

“‘Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone!’” muttered the master of the house, with one of those graceful, mocking bows that always disconcerted the orphan.