don; and having missed them, had then decided to wait till they could
talk face to face. _Le papier est bete!_ "I had too much to say!"

Well, when he had said it, to what did it amount? He claimed the right to
tell the whole story; and began therefore by tracing the steps by which
he had become necessary to Melrose; by describing his astonishment when
the offer of the agency was made to him; and the sudden rush of plans and
hopes for the future. Then, by a swift and effective digression he
sketched the character of Melrose, as he had come to know it; the
ferocity of the old man's will; his mad obstinacy, in which there was
always a touch of fantastic imagination; and those alternations of
solitude and excitement, with the inevitable, accompanying defiance of
all laws of health, physical and moral, which for years had made up his
life.

"Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man. He will tell me
nothing of what his doctors say to him. But I put two and two together. I
don't believe he can possibly live long. A year or two at most; perhaps
much less. When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical
weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into
my hands. It has not been so. The mind, the will are iron, whatever the
physical weakness may be. He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist
torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just
because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society. He reckons that
his life will last out his resistance--his successful resistance--and
that he will go down with the flag flying. So that he takes an insane
pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him. For
it _is_ insane--remember that! The moral state, the moral judgments, are
all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are
concerned, still superb."

He paused. Her gaze--half-shrinking--was fixed on the face so near to
her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the
features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of
youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead
in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have
grown harsher and stronger.

"This, of course, is what I discovered as soon as I had taken the agency.
I did not know my man when I accepted. I began to know him, as soon as we
really came to business. I found him opposed t