etters. He did not
look up as Sam entered, and paid no attention to the instructions
Budsey was giving him. For the first time in his life, Sleeny found
that this neglect of his presence was vaguely offensive to him. A week
before, he would no more have thought of speaking to Farnham, or being
spoken to by him, than of entering into conversation with one of the
busts on the book-cases. Even now he had no desire to talk with the
proprietor of the house. He had come there to do certain work which he
was capable of doing well, and he preferred to do it and not be
bothered by irrelevant gossip. But, in spite of himself, he felt a
rising of revolt in his heart, as he laid out his tools, against the
quiet gentleman who sat with his back to him, engaged in his own work
and apparently unconscious of Sleeny's presence. A week before, they
had been nothing to each other, but now a woman had come between them,
and there is no such powerful conductor in nature. The quiet in which
Farnham sat seemed full of insolent triumph to the luckless lover, and
scraps of Offitt's sounding nonsense went through his mind: "A man is
more than a money-bag"; "the laborer is the true gentleman"; but they
did not give him much comfort. Not until he became interested in his
work did he recover the even beat of his pulse and the genuine
workmanlike play of his faculties. Then he forgot Farnham's presence in
his turn, and enjoyed himself in a rational way with his files and
chisels and screwdrivers.

He had been at work for an hour at one door, and had finished it to his
satisfaction, and sat down before another, when he heard the bell ring,
and Budsey immediately afterward ushered a lady through the hall and
into the drawing-room. His heart stood still at the rustle of the
dress,--it sounded so like Maud's; he looked over his shoulder through
the open door of the library and saw, to his great relief, that there
were two female figures taking their seats in the softly lighted room
beyond. One sat with her back to the light, and her features were not
distinctly visible; the other was where he could see three-quarters of
her face clearly relieved against the tapestry portiere. There is a
kind of beauty which makes glad every human heart that gazes on it, if
not utterly corrupt and vile, and it was such a face as this that Sam
Sleeny now looked at with a heart that grew happier as he gazed. It was
a morning face, full of the calm joy of the dawn, of the sw