nscience on the bench as judge; his
affections a special attorney:--silences of the night, in which he would
listen for the strong, quick, manly footstep and the closing of the door
in the corridor beyond:--silences of the dawn, when no clatter of
hoofs followed by a cheery call rang out for some one to take
Spitfire:--silences of the breakfast table, when he drank his coffee
alone, Alec tip-toeing about like a lost spirit. Sometimes his heart
would triumph and he begin to think out ways and means by which the past
could be effaced. Then again the flag of his pride would be raised aloft
so that he and all the people could see, and the old hard look would
once more settle in his face, the lips straighten and the thin fingers
tighten. No--NO! No assassins for him--no vulgar brawlers--and it was
at best a vulgar brawl--and this too within the confines of Moorlands,
where, for five generations, only gentlemen had been bred!

And yet, product as he was of a regime that worshipped no ideals but
its own; hide-bound by the traditions of his ancestry; holding in secret
disdain men and women who could not boast of equal wealth and lineage;
dictatorial, uncontradictable; stickler for obsolete forms and
ceremonies--there still lay deep under the crust of his pride the heart
of a father, and, by his standards, the soul of a gentleman.

What this renegade son of his thought of it all; this disturber of his
father's sleeping and waking hours, was far easier to discover. Dazed as
Harry had been at the parental verdict and heart-broken as he still was
over the dire results, he could not, though he tried, see what else he
could have done. His father, he argued to himself, had shot and killed
a man when he was but little older than himself, and for an offence much
less grave than Willits's insult to Kate: he had frequently boasted of
it, showing him the big brass button that had deflected the bullet and
saved his life. So had his Uncle George, five years before--not a dead
man that time, but a lame one--who was still limping around the club and
very good friends the two, so far as he knew. Why then blame HIM? As
for the law of hospitality being violated, that was but one of the
idiosyncrasies of his father, who was daft on hospitality. How could
Willits be his guest when he was his enemy? St. George had begged the
wounded man to apologize; if he had done so he would have extended
his hand and taken him to Kate, who, upon a second apology,