That white-headed gentleman sat down amidst hearty plaudits, and Maurice's health was drunk with due honours; and then Maurice—"dear old Morry!" as his sister impetuously exclaimed—responded to the toast.
A long speech in his turn, delivered with much energy and rapidity, his flushed and good-looking face turning to right and left of that long array of guests around him. Sidney's heart thrilled to hear one expression of Maurice's—an allusion to the gentleman who had proposed his health, "his dear uncle, whose presence there tended so much to the pleasurable feelings of that night."
"Well—he is a good fellow," said Sidney, heartily; "I wish I had a brother like him to stand by me in life."
His cousin looked her gratitude at him for the outburst, and no one hammered the table more lustily than Sidney at the conclusion of his cousin's speech.
There were a few more toasts before the ladies retired at the signal given by the hostess; there was a rustle of silk and muslin through the broad doorway, and then the gentlemen left to themselves, and many of them breathing freer in consequence.
There remained some twenty or twenty-five gentlemen to do honour to the wine which shone from the array of decanters on the table; Sidney drew his chair closer to his neighbour's, and looked round him again. His father, perfectly at home—happy and equable—sparing with the wine, too, as Sidney had wished, and yet had not thought filial to hint to his sire. His father almost faced him, and Sidney, whose powerful glasses brought him within range of vision, could return the smile bestowed in his direction now and then. The old man, who had forgotten his poverty, kept in remembrance the son who had shared that poverty with him.
There was more speech-making after the ladies had retired; deeper drinking, and a wider scope of subjects. One gentleman near his father, in a lackadaisical strain, rose to propose the health of the family physician, who had been balked of his speech early in the evening; and Sidney, startled somewhat by the tone of a voice that he fancied he had heard before, peered through his glasses, and tried to make the speaker out.
He had seen that man before, or heard that strange drawl—where or in what company he was at fault—the man's features were indistinct at that distance. He edged his chair nearer—even in his intense curiosity, for which he was scarcely able to account, changed his place, and went a few seats from the foot of the table, where Maurice was now sitting in his mother's vacated place.
Then Sidney recognized the man—suddenly and swiftly the truth darted upon him—he had met that man in the Borough; he had stood between him and his offensive persecution of Harriet Wesden; he was the "prowler" of old days—the man from whom he had extorted an apology in the public streets, and from whom a generous and unwashed public would accept no apology.
The old antagonism seemed to revive on the instant; he felt the man's presence there an insult to himself; his blood warmed, and his ears tingled; he wondered what reason had brought that man there, and whose friend he could possibly be?