, the gnarled
intricacies and contradictions of such a character! Horror at his
father's end, and dread of a like fate for himself! Robert did not know
very much of the squire, but he knew enough to feel sure that this
confiding indulgent theory of Meyrick's was ludicrously far from the
mark as an adequate explanation of Mr. Wendover's later life.

Presently Meyrick became aware of the sort of tacit resistance which his
companion's mind was opposing to his own. He dropped the wandering
narrative he was busy upon with a sigh.

'Ah well, I daresay it's hard, it's hard,' he said with patient
acquiescence in his voice, 'to believe a man can't help himself. I
daresay we doctors get to muddle up right and wrong. But if ever there
was a man sick in mind--for all his book-learning they talk about--and
sick in soul, that man is the squire.'

Robert looked at him with a softer expression. There was a new dignity
about the simple old man. The old-fashioned deference, which had never
let him forget in speaking to Robert that he was speaking to a man of
family, and which showed itself in all sorts of antiquated locutions
which were a torment to his son, had given way to something still more
deeply ingrained. His gaunt figure, with the stoop, and the spectacles
and the long straight hair--like the figure of a superannuated
schoolmaster--assumed, as he turned again to his younger companion,
something of authority, something almost of stateliness.

'Ah, Mr. Elsmere,' he said, laying his shrunk hand on the younger
man's sleeve and speaking with emotion, 'you're very good to the
poor. We're all proud of you--you and your good lady. But when
you were coming, and I heard tell all about you, I thought of
my poor squire, and I said to myself, "That young man'll be good
to _him_. The squire will make friends with him, and Mr. Elsmere
will have a good wife--and there'll be children born to him--and
the squire will take an interest--and--and--maybe----'"

The old man paused. Robert grasped his hand silently.

'And there was something in the way between you,' the speaker went on,
sighing. 'I daresay you were quite right--quite right. I can't judge.
Only there are ways of doing a thing. And it was a last chance; and now
its missed--it's missed. Ah! it's no good talking; he has a heart--he
has! Many's the kind thing he's done in old days for me and mine--I'll
never forget them! But all these last few years--oh, I know, I know. You
can't go