Beaton said nothing, and the old man went on.

“I ain’t very well up in the ways of the world, and I don’t pretend to be.  All I want is to be fair and square with everybody.  I’ve made mistakes, though, in my time—­” He stopped, and Beaton was not proof against the misery of his face, which was twisted as with some strong physical ache.  “I don’t know as I want to make any more, if I can help it.  I don’t know but what you had a right to keep on comin’, and if you had I want you to say so.  Don’t you be afraid but what I’ll take it in the right way.  I don’t want to take advantage of anybody, and I don’t ask you to say any more than that.”

Beaton did not find the humiliation of the man who had humiliated him so sweet as he could have fancied it might be.  He knew how it had come about, and that it was an effect of love for his child; it did not matter by what ungracious means she had brought him to know that he loved her better than his own will, that his wish for her happiness was stronger than his pride; it was enough that he was now somehow brought to give proof of it.  Beaton could not be aware of all that dark coil of circumstance through which Dryfoos’s present action evolved itself; the worst of this was buried in the secret of the old man’s heart, a worm of perpetual torment.  What was apparent to another was that he was broken by the sorrow that had fallen upon him, and it was this that Beaton respected and pitied in his impulse to be frank and kind in his answer.

“No, I had no right to keep coming to your house in the way I did, unless—­unless I meant more than I ever said.”  Beaton added:  “I don’t say that what you did was usual—­in this country, at any rate; but I can’t say you were wrong.  Since you speak to me about the matter, it’s only fair to myself to say that a good deal goes on in life without much thinking of consequences.  That’s the way I excuse myself.”

“And you say Mrs. Mandel done right?” asked Dryfoos, as if he wished simply to be assured of a point of etiquette.

“Yes, she did right.  I’ve nothing to complain of.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said Dryfoos; but apparently he had not finished, and he did not go, though the silence that Beaton now kept gave him a chance to do so.  He began a series of questions which had no relation to the matter in hand, though they were strictly personal to Beaton.  “What countryman are you?” he asked, after a moment.

“What countryman?” Beaton frowned back at him.

“Yes, are you an American by birth?”

“Yes; I was born in Syracuse.”

“Protestant?”

“My father is a Scotch Seceder.”

“What business is your father in?”

Beaton faltered and blushed; then he answered: 

“He’s in the monument business, as he calls it.  He’s a tombstone cutter.”  Now that he was launched, Beaton saw no reason for not declaring, “My father’s always been a poor man, and worked with his own hands for his living.”  He had too slight esteem socially for Dryfoos to conceal a fact from him that he might have wished to blink with others.