“Pshaw!” answered Skelton contemptuously, “you will not do him any harm until your heedless tongue begins to wag, when, in pure idleness and wantonness, you will tell all you know. However, the fact that you are about the only person in the world who takes a true view of the case, saves me from kicking you out of doors. You must see for yourself I love that boy with the strongest, strangest affection. It has been my punishment, to suffer acutely at all the contumely heaped upon him; to yearn for the only thing I can’t give him--an equality with his kind; to feel like the cut of a knife every slight, every covert indignity put upon him. I tell you, had Blair and his wife done the simplest kind thing for that boy, I believe it would have disarmed me. But, no; they have flouted him studiously. Blair has never heard Lewis’s name mentioned before me without a look that made me want to have him by the throat; and in return, he shall be a beggar.” Skelton said this with perfect coolness, but it made a cold chill run down Bulstrode’s backbone. “The least kindness, the smallest gentleness, shown that boy is eternally remembered by me, and I have too little, too little to remember. And shall I overlook the insolence of the Blairs towards him? Ah, no. That is not like me. The strongest hold you have over me, Bulstrode, is because I know you love that boy, and it would distress him to part with you. But I think I have had as much of your company as I care for just now, so go.” Bulstrode went immediately.