And so he let the hornets buzz--and they did swarm and buzz and sting. As long as his wrath lasted he was proof against their assaults--in fact their attacks only confirmed him in his position. It was when all this ceased, for few continued to remonstrate with him after they had heard his final: “I decline to discuss it with you, madame,” or the more significant: “How dare you, sir, refer to my private affairs without my permission?”--it was, I say, when all this ceased, and when neither his wife, who after her first savage outbreak had purposely held her peace, nor any of the servants--not even old Alec, who went about with streaming eyes and a great lump in his throat--dared renew their entreaties for Marse Harry's return, that he began to reflect on his course. Soon the great silences overawed him--periods of loneliness when he sat confronting his soul, his conscience on the bench as judge; his affections a special attorney:--silences of the night, in which he would listen for the strong, quick, manly footstep and the closing of the door in the corridor beyond:--silences of the dawn, when no clatter of hoofs followed by a cheery call rang out for some one to take Spitfire:--silences of the breakfast table, when he drank his coffee alone, Alec tip-toeing about like a lost spirit. Sometimes his heart would triumph and he begin to think out ways and means by which the past could be effaced. Then again the flag of his pride would be raised aloft so that he and all the people could see, and the old hard look would once more settle in his face, the lips straighten and the thin fingers tighten. No--NO! No assassins for him--no vulgar brawlers--and it was at best a vulgar brawl--and this too within the confines of Moorlands, where, for five generations, only gentlemen had been bred! And yet, product as he was of a regime that worshipped no ideals but its own; hide-bound by the traditions of his ancestry; holding in secret disdain men and women who could not boast of equal wealth and lineage; dictatorial, uncontradictable; stickler for obsolete forms and ceremonies--there still lay deep under the crust of his pride the heart of a father, and, by his standards, the soul of a gentleman.