remarked again the strange emaciation, the premature physical weariness,
of the hand that held it: he wondered if Mr. Lavington had ever noticed
his nephew's hand, and if it were not poignantly visible to him now.

With this thought in his mind, Faxon raised his eyes to look at
Mr. Lavington. The great man's gaze rested on Frank Rainer with an
expression of untroubled benevolence; and at the same instant Faxon's
attention was attracted by the presence in the room of another person,
who must have joined the group while he was upstairs searching for the
seal. The new-comer was a man of about Mr. Lavington's age and figure,
who stood just behind his chair, and who, at the moment when Faxon
first saw him, was gazing at young Rainer with an equal intensity of
attention. The likeness between the two men--perhaps increased by the
fact that the hooded lamps on the table left the figure behind the
chair in shadow--struck Faxon the more because of the contrast in their
expression. John Lavington, during his nephew's clumsy attempt to
drop the wax and apply the seal, continued to fasten on him a look
of half-amused affection; while the man behind the chair, so oddly
reduplicating the lines of his features and figure, turned on the boy a
face of pale hostility.

The impression was so startling that Faxon forgot what was going on
about him. He was just dimly aware of young Reiner's exclaiming; "Your
turn, Mr. Grisben!" of Mr. Grisben's protesting: "No--no; Mr. Faxon
first," and of the pen's being thereupon transferred to his own hand.
He received it with a deadly sense of being unable to move, or even to
understand what was expected of him, till he became conscious of Mr.
Grisben's paternally pointing out the precise spot on which he was to
leave his autograph. The effort to fix his attention and steady his hand
prolonged the process of signing, and when he stood up--a strange weight
of fatigue on all his limbs--the figure behind Mr. Lavington's chair was
gone.

Faxon felt an immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling that the man's
exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr.
Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that
the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any
rate he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted.
Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch inscribing his name
at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington--his eyes