"How could it have come here?" asks Lord Sartoris, without raising his eyes from the luckless handkerchief. "Do you know anything of it?"
"Nothing; except that it belongs to Ruth. I gave it to her last Christmas."
"You! A curious gift to a girl in her rank in life?"
"She wished for it," returns Branscombe, curtly.
"Then she is no doubt heart-broken, imagining she has lost it. Return it to her, I advise you, without delay," says his uncle, contemptuously, throwing it from him to a table near. "I need not detain you any longer, now,"—rising, and moving towards the door.
"Going so soon?" says the younger man, roused from his galling reflections, by his uncle's abrupt departure, to some sense of cordiality. "Why, you have hardly stayed a moment."
"I have stayed long enough,—too long," says Lord Sartoris, gloomily, fixing his dark eyes (that age have failed to dim) upon the man who has been to him as his own soul.
"Too long?" repeats Branscombe, coloring darkly.
"Yes. Have you forgotten altogether the motto of our race?—'Leal friend, leal foe.' Let me bring it to your memory."
"Pray do not trouble yourself. I remember it perfectly," says Dorian, haughtily, drawing up his figure to its fullest height. "I am sorry, my lord, you should think it necessary to remind me of it."