"Ay, that we do."
My mother looked at Wilfred with a yearning look, and then turning towards them said,
"Mr. Roger left this house eleven years ago. Many of you were servants here then, and since then you have served my son and me faithfully; but your rightful master has come home, and now I resign all authority and command to him."
"But mother——" I interrupted.
"Stop," she went on, "I must do my duty. It will not be much longer"—turning to the servants—"that I shall be with you, but this I must confess; I have been the means of Mr. Roger being away from you; through me you have been deprived of your rightful master."
It must have cost her a terrible struggle to say this, for she was a proud woman, and regarded servants as inferior beings to herself, and, as with blanched face and trembling step she left the room immediately after, I realised that she had come to some resolution which as yet was unknown to me.
Meanwhile all the older servants crowded around me, each expressing gladness because of my return, and gladly acknowledging me as master. And all the while Wilfred sat like one entranced, never moving, never uttering a word.
They left us at length and thus Wilfred and I were alone together. For a time neither spoke, then I held out my hand to him.
"Wilfred," I said, "let us shake hands and be brothers once more."
"You are no brother of mine," he said, without moving.