The father and son entered the room, each heavily preoccupied. Marshall seated himself and stared moodily into the fire. Already the judge had found a chair and his glance was fixed on the carpet at his feet. Presently looking up he asked:
"Will you be good enough to tell me what that fellow is doing here?"
"Andy?"
The single word came from Langham as with a weary acceptance of his father's anger.
"Yes, certainly—Gilmore—of whom do you imagine me to be speaking?"
"Give a dog a bad name—"
"He has earned his name. I had heard something of this but did not credit it!" said the judge.
There was another pause.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to explain how I happen to meet that fellow here?"
The judge regarded his son fixedly. There had always existed a cordial frankness in their intercourse, for though the judge was a man of few intimacies, family ties meant much to him, and these ties were now all centered in his son. He had shown infinite patience with Marshall's turbulent youth; an even greater patience with his dissipated manhood; he believed that in spite of the terrible drafts he was making on his energies, his future would not be lacking in solid and worthy achievement. In his own case the traditional vice of the Langhams had passed him by. He was grateful for this, but it had never provoked in him any spirit of self-righteousness; indeed, it had only made him the more tender in his judgment of his son's lapses.