The one was that of a woman, perhaps fifty-five years of age, but who looked still older from the fact of being dressed in the mode of thirty years before. Her garments might be those of an upper servant, and indeed they were so; for the personage was neither more nor less than the housekeeper; but to all appearance she was a resuscitated housekeeper of a former age; for the gown padded in a long roll just under the blade-bones, the straight cut bodice, the tall but flat-crowned and wide-spreading cap, were not of the day in which she lived, and her face too was as dry as the outer shell of a cocoa-nut. The other figure had the back turned to the door, and was evidently speaking earnestly to Mrs. Billiter; but it was that of a man, tall, and though stiffly made, yet sinewy and strong. Mr. Wittingham's breath came thick and short, but the noise of his suddenly opening the door, and his step in the hall, made the housekeeper utter a low cry of surprise, and her male companion turn quickly round. Then Mr. Wittingham's worst apprehensions were realised, for the face he saw before him was that of his own son, though somewhat disfigured by an eye swollen and discoloured, and a deep long cut just over it on the brow. The young man seemed surprised and confounded by the unexpected apparition of his father, but it was too late to shirk the encounter, though he well knew it would not be a pleasant one. He was accustomed, too, to scenes of altercation with his parent, for Mr. Wittingham had not proceeded wisely with his son, who was a mere boy when he himself retired from business. He had not only alternately indulged him and thwarted him; encouraged him to spend money largely, and to dazzle the eyes of the neighbours by expense, at the same time limiting his means and exacting a rigid account of his payments; but as the young man had grown up he had continued sometimes to treat him as a boy, sometimes as a man; and while he more than connived at his emulating the great in those pleasures which approach vices, he denied him the sums by which such a course could alone be carried out.