"Yes, I have. I wear it incessantly: I have taken rather a fancy to it," replies Branscombe, in an uncompromising tone. "My persistent admiration for it has driven my tailor to despair. I very seldom (except, perhaps, at midnight revels or afternoon bores) appear in public without it." "Then you deny nothing?" "Nothing!"--contemptuously, making a movement as though to depart. "Why should I? If, after all these years that you have known me, you can imagine me capable of evil such as you describe so graphically, it would give me no pleasure to vindicate myself in your eyes. Think of me as you will: I shall take no steps to justify myself." "You dare not!" says Sartoris, in a stifled tone, confronting him fully for the first time. "That is just as you please to think," says Branscombe, turning upon him with flashing eyes. He frowns heavily, and, with a little gesture common to him, raises his hand and pushes the end of his fair moustache between his teeth. Then, with a sudden effort, he controls himself, and goes on more quietly: "I shall always feel regret in that you found it so easy a matter to believe me guilty of so monstrous a deed. I think we can have nothing further to say to each other, either now or in the future. I wish you good-evening." Sartoris, standing with his back almost turned to his nephew, takes no heed of this angry farewell; and Dorian, going out, closes the door calmly behind him. Passing through the Long Hall, as it has been called from time immemorial, he encounters Simon Gale, the old butler, and stops to speak to him, kindly, as is his wont, though in truth his heart is sore. "Ah, Simon! How warm the weather grows!" he says, genially brushing his short hair back from his forehead. The attempt is praiseworthy, as really there is no hair to speak of, his barber having provided against that. He speaks kindly, carelessly--if a little wearily. His pulses are throbbing, and his heart beating hotly with passionate indignation and disappointment. "Very warm, sir," returns the old man, regarding him wistfully. He is not thinking of the weather, either of its heat or cold. He is only wondering, with a foreboding sadness, whether the man before him--who has been to him as the apple of his eye--is guilty or not of the crime imputed to him. With an effort he recovers himself, and asks, hastily, though almost without purpose, "Have you seen my lord?" "Yes; I have only just left him." "You will stay to dinner, Mr. Dorian?" He has been "Mr. Dorian" to him for so many years that now the more formal Mr. Branscombe is impossible. "Not to-night. Some other time when my uncle--" He pauses. "You think him looking well?" asks the old man, anxiously, mistaking his hesitation. "Well! Oh, that doesn't describe him," says Branscombe, with a shrug, and a somewhat ironical laugh. "He struck me as being unusually lively,--in fact, 'strong as Boreas on the main.' I thought him very well indeed."