, Floury Iden, My Lord Lardy-Cake, Marquis Iden, His Greasy
Grace; and, indeed, with his whims and humours, and patronage, his
caprices and ways of going on, if he had but had a patent of nobility,
Grandfather Iden would have made a wonderfully good duke.

By-and-by in comes the old Pacha, still wearing his great grey tottery
hat, and proceeds from chair to chair, tapping folk on the shoulder,
saying a gracious word or two, and dropping his new golden sovereigns in
their eager palms. There was a loud hum of conversation as he went
round; they all tried to appear so immensely happy to see him.

Amaryllis did not exactly watch him, but of course knew what he was
about, when suddenly there was a dead silence. Thirty-two people
suddenly stopped talking as if the pneumatic brake had been applied to
their lips by a sixty-ton locomotive.

Dead, ominous silence. You could almost hear the cat licking his paw
under the table.

Amaryllis looked, and saw the old man leaning with both hands on the
back of his son's empty chair.

He seemed to cling to it as if it was a spar floating on the barren
ocean of life and death into which his withered old body was sinking.

Perhaps he really would have clung like that to his son had but his son
come to him, and borne a little, and for a little while, with his ways.

A sorrowful thing to see--the old man of ninety clinging to the back of
his son's empty chair. His great grey tottery hat seemed about to tumble
on the floor--his back bowed a little more--and he groaned deeply, three
times.

We can see, being out of the play and spectators merely, that there was
a human cry for help in the old man's groan--his heart yearned for his
son's strong arm to lean on.

The crowd of relations were in doubt as to whether they should rejoice,
whether the groan was a sign of indignation, of anger too deep ever to
be forgotten, or whether they should be alarmed at the possibility of
reconciliation.

The Flamma blood was up too much in Amaryllis for her to feel pity for
him as she would have done in any other mood; she hated him all the
more; he was rich, the five-shilling fare was nothing to him, he could
hire a fly from the "Lamb Inn," and drive over and make friends with her
father in half an hour. Groaning there--the hideous old monster! and her
mother without a decent pair of boots.

In a moment or two Grandfather Iden recovered himself, and continued the
distribution, and by-and-by Amarylli