It will be gathered from this description that to call all the race of Davenants bad was unfair; every rule has its exception, and Stephen Davenant was the exception to this. He was “a good young man.”
Fathers held him up as a pattern to their wayward sons, mothers patronized and lauded him, and their daughters regarded him as almost too good to live.
The minutes, so slow for the watchers, so rapid to the man for whom they were numbered, passed, and the old cracked clock in the half-ruined stables wheezed out the hour, when, as if the sound had roused him, old Ralph moved slightly, and opening his eyes, looked slowly from one upright figure to the other.
Dark eyes that had not even yet lost all their fire, and still shone out like a bird’s from their wrinkled, cavernous hollows.
Stephen unlocked his wrist, bent down, and murmured, in his soft, silky voice:
“Uncle, do you know me?”
A smile, an unpleasant smile to see on such a face, glimmered on the old man’s lips.
“Here still, Stephen?” he said, slowly and hollowly. “You’d make a good—mute.”
A faint, pink tinge crept over Stephen’s pale face, but he smiled and shook his head meekly.
“Who’s that?” asked Ralph, half turning his eyes to the physician.