“Let us come back to fact, sir,” said the Chief Baron, not pleased with the retort. “How can you base any right to approach me with a request on the circumstance that his Excellency desired to give you what belonged to another?”
“Yes, that puts it forcibly—unanswerably—to my thinking,” said Haire.
“I may condole with disappointment, sir, but I am not bound to compensate defeat,” said the old Judge; and he arose and walked the room with that irritable look and manner which even the faintest opposition to him often evoked, and for which even the utterance of a flippant rebuke but partly compensated him.
“I take it, my Lord Chief Baron,” said Fossbrooke, calmly, “that I have neither asked for condolence nor compensation. I told you, I hoped distinctly that what I was about to urge was not on my own behalf.”
“Well, sir, and I think the plea is only the less sustainable. The Viceroy's letter might give a pretext for the one; there is nothing in our acquaintance would warrant the other.”
“If you knew, sir, how determined I am not to take offence at words which certainly imperil patience, you would possibly spare me some of these asperities. I am in close relations of friendship with your grandson; he is at present living with me; I have pledged myself to his father to do my utmost in securing him some honorable livelihood, and it is in his behalf that I have presented myself before you to-day. Will you graciously accord me a hearing on this ground?”
There was a quiet dignity of manner in which he said this, a total forgetfulness of self, and a manly simplicity of purpose so palpable, that the old Judge felt he was in presence of one whose character called for all his respect; at the same time he was not one to be suddenly carried away by a sentiment, and in a very measured voice he replied, “If I 'm flattered, sir, by the interest you take in a member of my family, I am still susceptible of a certain displeasure that it should be a stranger should stand before me to ask me for any favor to my own.”
“I am aware, my Lord Chief Baron, that my position is a false one, but so is your own.”
“Mine, sir! mine? What do you mean? Explain yourself.”
“If your Lordship's interest had been exerted as it might have been, Dr. Lendrick's son would never have needed so humble a friend as he has found in me.”