a long, long time; like one
who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has
nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes,
his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode
from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one.

The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already
given him by Prosper. He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at
sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with
eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to
devour like a beast. Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the
butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away. The face of
the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and
gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was
for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not
think it so.

Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a
cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable
atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on
the face of his host, all swam before him. Looking frankly at
Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner:

"I give it up. I can't--it's not to be made out or understood..."

"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to
telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be?
For from the moment you first spoke----"

The young man nodded. "I'm a gentleman. It's worse somehow--I don't
know why, but it is."

Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places
to which you feel you will never return. Only," he quickly offered,
"in your case you must, you know, go back."

"No," said the young man, quietly.

There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other
could not press it.

"Better still, you can then go on?"

The vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "Since I've known
you--seen you--I have thought that I might." But he said nothing more,
and Bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him,
finished:

"You shall go on, and I'll help you."

The stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his
cheeks took the flush of health. Remaining a little bent over, his
eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said:

"I'm an Englishman. My family is everything that's decent and all