Lord Welter was a bully; but he was as brave as a lion, with nerves of steel. He neither left off his drawing, nor looked up; he only said—"Charley, boy, come and sit down till I have finished this fellow. Get an ace of clubs and try your own hand. I am out of practice."
Perhaps even Lord Welter might have started when he heard Charles's voice, and felt his hand on his shoulder; but he had had one instant—only one instant—of preparation. When he heard the key turn in the door, he had looked in a pier-glass opposite to him, and seen who and what was coming, and then gone on with his employment. Even allowing for this moment's preparation, we must give him credit for the nerve of one man in ten thousand; for the apparition of Charles Ravenshoe was as unlooked-for as that of any one of Charles Ravenshoe's remote ancestors.
You see, I call him Charles Ravenshoe still. It is a trick. You must excuse it.
Charles did not sit down and draw devils; he said, in a quiet, mournful tone,
"Welter, Welter, why have you been such a villain?"
Lord Welter found that a difficult question to answer. He let it alone, and said nothing.
"I say nothing about Adelaide. You did not use me well there; for, when you persuaded her to go off with you, you had not heard of my ruin."
"On my soul, Charles, there was not much persuasion wanted there."
"Very likely. I do not want to speak about that, but about Ellen, my sister. Was anything ever done more shamefully than that?"
Charles expected some furious outbreak when he said that. None came. What was good in Lord Welter came to the surface, when he saw his old friend and playmate there before him, sunk so far below him in all that this world considers worth having, but rising so far above him in his fearless honour and manliness. He was humbled, sorry, and ashamed. Bitter as Charles's words were, he felt they were true, and had manhood enough left not to resent them. To the sensation of fear, as I have said before, Lord Welter was a total stranger, or he might have been nervous at being locked up in a room alone, with a desperate man, physically his equal, whom he had so shamefully wronged. He rose and leant against the chimney-piece, looking at Charles.