Old Anthony looked taken by surprise. "I don't know anything about it," said he, somewhat roughly. "I know a little of how he has been bred, he and his brothers."
"So do I," said Mr. Ashley. "I wish a few more in the world had been bred in the same way."
"Why! they have been bred to work!" exclaimed old Anthony, in astonishment. "They have not been bred as gentlemen. They have not had enough to eat."
The concluding sentence elicited an involuntary laugh from the master. "At any rate, the want does not appear to have stinted their growth, or injured them in a physical point of view," he rejoined, a touch of sarcasm in his tone. "They are fine-grown men; and, Mr. Dare, they are gentlemen, whether they have been bred as such or not. Gentlemen in looks, in manners, and in mind and heart."
"I don't care what they are," again repeated old Anthony. "I did not come here to talk about them, but about Cyril. Your exalting Halliburton into the general favour that ought legitimately to have been Cyril's is a piece of injustice. Cyril says you have this morning announced publicly that Halliburton is master, under you. It is flagrant injustice."
"No man living has ever had cause to tax me with injustice," impressively answered Thomas Ashley. "I have been far more just to Cyril than he deserves. Stay: 'just' is a wrong word. I have been far more lenient to him. Shall I tell you that I have kept him on here out of compassion, in the hope that the considerate way in which I treated him might be an inducement to him to turn over a new leaf, and discard his faults? I would not turn him away to be a town's talk. Deep down within the archives of my memory, my own sole knowledge, I buried the great fault of which he was guilty here. He was young; and I would not take from him his fair fame on the very threshold of his commercial life."
"Great fault?" hesitated Mr. Dare, looking half frightened.
Thomas Ashley inclined his head, and lowered his voice to a deeper whisper.
"When he robbed my desk of the cheque, I fancy your own suspicions of him were to the full as much awakened as mine."
There was no reply, unless a groan from Anthony Dare could be called one. His hands, supporting his chin, rested on his stick still. Mr. Ashley resumed: