, however, replied to them glibly enough. "I shall do the just
and reasonable thing! As I promised Tatham, I shall look into the story
of these two women, and if it is what it professes to be, I shall press
Melrose to provide for them."

Conscience objected: "If he refuses?"

"They can enforce their claim legally, and I shall make him realize it."

"Can you?" said Conscience. "Have you any hold upon him at all?"

A flood of humiliation, indeed, rushed in upon him, as he recalled his
effort, while Melrose was away in August, to make at least some temporary
improvement in the condition of the Mainstairs cottages--secretly--out of
his own money--by the help of the cottagers themselves. The attempt had
been reported to Melrose by that spying little beast, Nash, and
peremptorily stopped by telegram--"Kindly leave my property alone. It is
not yours to meddle with."

And that most abominable scene, after Melrose's return to the Tower!
Faversham could never think of it without shame and disgust. Ten times
had he been on the point of dashing down his papers at Melrose's feet,
and turning his back on the old madman, and his house, forever. It was,
of course, the thought of the gifts he had already accepted, and of that
vast heritage waiting for him when Melrose should be in his grave, which
had restrained him--that alone; no cynic could put it more nakedly than
did Faversham's own thoughts. He was tied and bound by his own actions,
and his own desires; he had submitted--grovelled to a tyrant; and he knew
well enough that from that day he had been a lesser and a meaner man.

But--no silly exaggeration! He straightened himself in his saddle. He was
doing plenty of good work elsewhere, work with which Melrose did not
trouble himself to interfere; work which would gradually tell upon the
condition and happiness of the estate. Put that against the other. Men
are not plaster saints--or, still less, live ones, with the power of
miracle; but struggling creatures of flesh and blood, who do, not what
they will, but what they can.

And suddenly he seemed once more to be writing to Lydia Penfold. How
often he had written to her during these two months! He recalled the joy
of the earlier correspondence, in which he had been his natural self,
pleading, arguing, planning; showing all the eagerness--the sincere
eagerness--there was in him, to make a decent job of his agency, to stand
well with his new neighbours--above all with "one slight