The same stillness prevailed as in the afternoon. This struck Skelton more unpleasantly than usual. He would have liked to see Lewis romping about, and making cheerful, merry, boyish noises. But there was no sound except the dreary sough of the rain and the wind, and the harsh beating of the overhanging trees against the cornice of the house. The wind seemed to be coming up stronger from the bay, and the waves rolling in sometimes drowned the falling of the rain. For two hours the stillness was unbroken. Then, Skelton having laid down his book for a moment, Bulstrode asked suddenly: “And how did he take it?” Skelton knew perfectly well what Bulstrode meant, and, not being a person of subterfuges, answered exactly to the point: “Like a man.” “I thought so,” remarked Bulstrode. If he had studied ten years how to placate Skelton he could not have hit it off more aptly. “He grasped the point of honour in a moment--even quicker than I anticipated. He said he would rather be respectably born than have all I could give him. The little rebel actually proposed to fight it out; he ‘hoped I would wait until he was twenty-one’; he ‘wouldn’t profit by it anyhow!’ and he ‘intended to make the best fight he could.’ Bulstrode, I almost forgive you for having forced that disclosure on me when I remember the exquisite satisfaction--yes, good God! the _tremendous_ satisfaction--I felt in that boy when I saw that dogged determination of his to hold to what he calls his honour.” Bulstrode knew by these words that Skelton did not intend to turn him out of doors. “You ought to have seen his face the day that dratted Mrs. Shapleigh told him that he looked like that picture.” Bulstrode jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the picture of Skelton’s father. “I thought he would have died of shame.” Skelton’s face at this became sad, but it was also wonderfully tender. Bulstrode kept on: “I never saw you both so much alike as to-night. The boy’s face has hardened; he is going through with a terrible experience, and he will come out of it a man, not a boy. And your face, Skelton, seemed to be softening.” “And, by heaven, my heart is softening, too!” cried Skelton. “One would have thought that I would have kicked you out of doors for babbling my private affairs, but your love for that boy, and his love for you--and so-- I am a weak fool, and forgive you. I believe I am waking up to the emotional side of human nature.”