Old Budlong looked up, with a sudden jerk of the head. His eyes, too, were wet and his hands tremulous. “Gentlemen,” said he, steadying his voice, which would have broken, “I’m an old man, but I’ve been a kind husband, and as devoted to my wife as I knew how. I sometimes thought she was a little gay and it made me unhappy--but I was old and she was young, and I never thwarted her. She has had everything she wished, and, gentlemen, I loved her like a wife and a daughter. She was a beautiful woman, you know, and I found her very poor, the daughter of one of my old cronies, and I put her where she belonged, among splendid things. I have never seen anything handsomer than she was, gentlemen, and I was proud of her.” He spoke of her as if she were dead, and other lips were quivering, in sympathy with his. “Perhaps you have thought,” he went on, after a moment, with a quiet dignity that was new to him and very touching, “that I was too much away this summer; but when we came back from Europe, she asked me to take a few thousands she had inherited from her uncle and operate with them. So I’ve been at work for her all summer in that hot town. I paid her over the profits last time I was down, in shares of the Manhattan Bank, a good old stock, twenty-three thousand dollars. I thought perhaps she’d like to feel more independent of the old man. I felt a little vain of the operation, gentlemen, and I said to her, ‘You see, Betty dear, your old boy does understand one thing, and that is how to make money for you.’ She actually cried at that, she did, gentlemen, and said she was very sorry I’d been away so much, working so hard, and she wished she was good enough for me. That doesn’t look like a bad woman,” he continued, wiping his eyes. “I can’t believe she’s bad,--not at heart, my friends,--but you know I’m an old man and a little rough, perhaps, and she didn’t like my being proud that I’d come up from a deck-hand on a North River barge. It was to please her that I stopped writing my name Flirney and bought my new house and tried to study French and went to Europe. But it was too late--I was too old--I couldn’t change--though God knows I tried! “I’m sorry on Arabella’s account,” he added, more calmly. “She’s an honest girl, and a pretty girl, and a good girl, too, though I say it, and like her own mother, when we lived down in Pearl Street long ago. Now, nobody will speak to the daughter of an old man whose wife has----” And the broken-hearted old gentleman stopped and wiped his eyes again. “No! no! Peter Skerrett, lad,” he continued, “I know what you mean to say. I love you like a son; but it’s no use. My name shall never bring its disgrace upon anyone else.