matter to believe me guilty of so monstrous a
deed. I think we can have nothing further to say to each other, either
now or in the future. I wish you good-evening."

Sartoris, standing with his back almost turned to his nephew, takes no
heed of this angry farewell; and Dorian, going out, closes the door
calmly behind him.

Passing through the Long Hall, as it has been called from time
immemorial, he encounters Simon Gale, the old butler, and stops to
speak to him, kindly, as is his wont, though in truth his heart is
sore.

"Ah, Simon! How warm the weather grows!" he says, genially brushing
his short hair back from his forehead. The attempt is praiseworthy, as
really there is no hair to speak of, his barber having provided
against that. He speaks kindly, carelessly--if a little wearily. His
pulses are throbbing, and his heart beating hotly with passionate
indignation and disappointment.

"Very warm, sir," returns the old man, regarding him wistfully. He is
not thinking of the weather, either of its heat or cold. He is only
wondering, with a foreboding sadness, whether the man before him--who
has been to him as the apple of his eye--is guilty or not of the crime
imputed to him. With an effort he recovers himself, and asks, hastily,
though almost without purpose, "Have you seen my lord?"

"Yes; I have only just left him."

"You will stay to dinner, Mr. Dorian?" He has been "Mr. Dorian" to him
for so many years that now the more formal Mr. Branscombe is
impossible.

"Not to-night. Some other time when my uncle--" He pauses.

"You think him looking well?" asks the old man, anxiously, mistaking
his hesitation.

"Well! Oh, that doesn't describe him," says Branscombe, with a shrug,
and a somewhat ironical laugh. "He struck me as being unusually
lively,--in fact, 'strong as Boreas on the main.' I thought him very
well indeed."

"Ay, he is so! A godly youth brings a peaceful age; and his was that.
He has lived a good life, and now is reaping his reward."

"Is he?" says Dorian, with a badly-suppressed yawn. "Of course I was
mistaken, but really it occurred to me that he was in an abominable
temper. Is a desire to insult every one part of the reward?"

"You make light of what I say," returns Simon, reproachfully, "yet it
is the very truth I speak. He has no special sin to repent, no lasting
misdeed to haunt him, as years creep on. It were well to think of it,"
says Simon, with a trembling voice, "while youth is sti