"Ah, Simon! How warm the weather grows!" he says, genially brushing his short hair back from his forehead. The attempt is praiseworthy, as really there is no hair to speak of, his barber having provided against that. He speaks kindly, carelessly—if a little wearily. His pulses are throbbing, and his heart beating hotly with passionate indignation and disappointment.
"Very warm, sir," returns the old man, regarding him wistfully. He is not thinking of the weather, either of its heat or cold. He is only wondering, with a foreboding sadness, whether the man before him—who has been to him as the apple of his eye—is guilty or not of the crime imputed to him. With an effort he recovers himself, and asks, hastily, though almost without purpose, "Have you seen my lord?"
"Yes; I have only just left him."
"You will stay to dinner, Mr. Dorian?" He has been "Mr. Dorian" to him for so many years that now the more formal Mr. Branscombe is impossible.
"Not to-night. Some other time when my uncle—" He pauses.
"You think him looking well?" asks the old man, anxiously, mistaking his hesitation.
"Well! Oh, that doesn't describe him," says Branscombe, with a shrug, and a somewhat ironical laugh. "He struck me as being unusually lively,—in fact, 'strong as Boreas on the main.' I thought him very well indeed."
"Ay, he is so! A godly youth brings a peaceful age; and his was that. He has lived a good life, and now is reaping his reward."
"Is he?" says Dorian, with a badly-suppressed yawn. "Of course I was mistaken, but really it occurred to me that he was in an abominable temper. Is a desire to insult every one part of the reward?"
"You make light of what I say," returns Simon, reproachfully, "yet it is the very truth I speak. He has no special sin to repent, no lasting misdeed to haunt him, as years creep on. It were well to think of it," says Simon, with a trembling voice, "while youth is still with us. To you it yet belongs. If you have done aught amiss, I entreat you to confess, and make amends for it, whilst there is yet time."