"Why do you say master?" said Miss Ffrench, coldly.
"Pardon me. I thought——"
Mr. Ffrench interposed in some hurry.
"Oh, he has always been such an uncommon young fellow that we have scarcely thought of him as a servant. He has not been exactly a servant in fact."
"Ah!" replied Saint Méran. "I ask pardon again."
He had been not a little bewildered at the change he found in the household. Mr. Ffrench no longer expounded his views at length with refined vigor. He frequently excused himself from the family circle on plea of severe indisposition, and at other times he sat in singular and depressing silence. He was evidently ill; there were lines upon his forehead and circles about his eyes; he had a perturbed air and started without any apparent cause. A change showed itself in Miss Ffrench also,—so subtle as not to be easily described. It was a change which was not pallor nor fragility. It was an alteration which baffled him and yet forced him to recognize its presence constantly, and to endeavor to comprehend it. Ffrench himself had seen it and pondered over it in secret. When he sat in his private room at the Bank, bewildered and terrified even by the mere effort to think and face the future, his burden was not a little increased by his remembrance of his hours at home. More than all the rest he shrank from the day of reckoning with his daughter. He had confronted Haworth and borne the worst of his wrath. The account of himself which he must render to her would be the most scathing ordeal of his life.
"Some women would pity me," he said to himself, "but she will not."
Truth to tell, he looked forward pathetically to the possibility that hereafter their paths might lie apart. Fate had saved him one fearful responsibility, at least. Her private fortune had been beyond his reach and she would still be a rich woman even when the worst came. He could live on very little, he told himself, and there was always some hope for a man of resources. He still believed somewhat, though rather vaguely, in his resources.
A few days after Murdoch's departure there came to Broxton, on a visit of inspection, a dignitary of great magnitude—a political economist, a Member of Parliament. Above all other things he was absorbed in the fortunes of the manufacturing districts. He had done the trades-unions the honor of weighing their cause and reasoning with them; he had parleyed with the strikers and held meetings with the masters. He had heard of Haworth and his extraordinary stand against the outbreak, and was curious to see him.