erent point of view. Evidently Meyrick had seen him at such
moments as wring from the harshest nature whatever grains of tenderness,
of pity, or of natural human weakness may be in it. And it was clear,
too, that the Squire, conscious perhaps of a shared secret, and feeling
a certain soothing influence in the _naivete_ and simplicity of the old
man's sympathy, had allowed himself at times, in the years succeeding
that illness of his, an amount of unbending in Meyrick's presence, such
as probably no other mortal had ever witnessed in him since his earliest
youth.

And yet how childish the old man's whole mental image of the Squire was
after all! What small account it made of the subtleties, 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 dare say it's hard, it's hard,' he said with patient
acquiescence in his voice, 'to believe a man can't help himself. I dare
say 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