that is overpowering him.

"Speak," says Fabian, sternly and remorselessly; "you can frame an
answer, I suppose."

The old man mutters something that is almost unintelligible, so thick
and husky are his tones. His eyes grow more restless;--mechanically, and
as though unconscious of the act, he leans his body stupidly against the
book-case near him.

"You are drunk," says Fabian, with slow scorn--"leave the room."

Having said this he turns again to his papers, as though from this
moment contemptuously unaware of the other's presence.

Slyme attempts an explanation:

"You wrong me, sir," he says, in a thick uncertain voice--"I--I am
ill--; my head is bad at times--I--"

"That will do," says Fabian, such ineffable disgust in his whole manner
as makes the miserable, besotted old wretch before him actually cower.
"No more lies. I have spoken to you already twice this week--and--; do
you know what hour it is?--twelve o'clock! you begin your day early."

"I assure you, sir," begins Slyme again. But Fabian will not listen:

"Go," he says, briefly, with a disdainful motion of the hand, and in a
tone not to be disobeyed. Slyme moves towards the door in his usual
slouching fashion, but, as he reaches it, pauses, and for one instant
lifts his heavy eyes, and lets them rest upon the young man at the
distant table.

This one instant reveals his thoughts. In his glance there is fear,
distrust, and, above and beyond all, a malignant and undying
hatred--such a hatred as might project itself from the eyes of the
traitor upon his victim. There is, too, upon Slyme's face a contortion
of the muscles, that it would be sacrilege to call a smile, that is
revengeful, and somehow suggests the possibility that this man, however
impotent he may now appear, has, in some strange fashion, acquired a
hidden and terrible power over the young man, who a moment since had
treated him with such scorn and contumely.

The old secretary's countenance for this fateful moment is one
brilliant, if wicked phantasmagoria, in which the ghosts of long
sustained thoughts appear and disappear, going from fear and its
brother, hatred, to lasting revenge. Then all vanish; the usual soddened
look returns to the man's face; he opens the door, and once more,
instead of the evil genius he looked a second ago, a broken-down,
drunken old creature crosses the threshold, shambles over the hall, and
is lost presently amongst the many passages.

* *