“Bitter words to part with! but hear me, sir. He who has joined his lot to mine should not pay the penalty of my fault. Against him you can bear no malice; he at least does not merit the reproach you have cast on me. Will you see him,—may he speak with you?”
“Whenever he pleases,—provided it be but once. I will not be importuned.”
“You will bear in mind, sir, that he is a man of birth and station, and that to his ears words of insult are a stranger.”
“I will treat him with all the deference I owe to his rank, and to the part he has performed towards myself,” said Fagan, slowly.
“It were, perhaps, better, then, that you should not meet?”
“It were, perhaps, better so!”
“Good-bye, sir. I have no more to say.”
“Good-bye, madam. Tell Raper I want to speak to him, as you pass out.”
With Raper the interview was briefer still. Fagan dryly informed his old follower that he no longer needed his services. And although Joe heard the words as a criminal might have listened to those of his last sentence, he never uttered a syllable. Fagan was brief, though bitter. He reproached him with the long years he had sheltered him beneath his roof, and reviled him for ingratitude! He spoke of him as one who had eaten the bread of idleness, and repaid an existence of ease by treachery. Once, and only once, did the insulting language he lavished on him seem to sting him beyond further endurance. It was when Fagan said:
“You think me in your power, sir; you fancy that amid that mass of rubbish and confusion my affairs have been involved in, that you alone can be the guide. But I tell you here now that were it even so, I 'd rather heap them on the fire, and stand forth a beggar to the world, than harbor within my doors a man like you!”