Robert looked at him with a softer expression. There was a new dignity about the simple old man. The old-fashioned deference, which had never let him forget in speaking to Robert that he was speaking to a man of family, and which showed itself in all sorts of antiquated locutions which were a torment to his son, had given way to something still more deeply ingrained. His gaunt figure, with the stoop, and the spectacles, and the long straight hair--like the figure of a superannuated schoolmaster--assumed, as he turned again to his younger companion, something of authority, something almost of stateliness. ‘Ah, Mr. Elsmere,’ he said, laying his shrunk hand on the younger man’s sleeve and speaking with emotion, ‘you’re very good to the poor. We’re all proud of you--you and your good lady. But when you were coming, and I heard tell all about you, I thought of my poor Squire, and I said to myself, “That young man’ll be good to _him_. The Squire will make friends with him, and Mr. Elsmere will have a good wife--and there’ll be children born to him--and the Squire will take an interest--and--and--maybe----” The old man paused. Robert grasped his hand silently. ‘And there was something in the way between you,’ the speaker went on, starting. ‘I dare say you were quite right--quite right. I can’t judge. Only there are ways of doing a thing. And it was a last chance; and now it’s missed--it’s missed. Ah! It’s no good talking; he has a heart--he has! Many’s the kind thing he’s done in old days for me and mine--I’ll never forget them! But all these last few years--oh, I know, I know. You can’t go and shut your heart up, and fly in the face of all the duties the Lord laid on you, without losing yourself and setting the Lord against you. But it is pitiful, Mr. Elsmere, it’s pitiful!’ It seemed to Robert suddenly as though there was a Divine breath passing through the wintry, lane and through the shaking voice of the old man. Beside the spirit looking out of those wrinkled eyes, his own hot youth, its justest resentments, its most righteous angers, seemed crude, harsh, inexcusable. ‘Thank you, Meyrick, thank you, and God bless you! Don’t imagine I will forget a word you have said to me.’ The Rector shook the hand he held warmly twice over, a gentle smile passed over Meyrick’s aging face, and they parted.