Sir Stafford stood, during the whole of this speech, with his arms folded and his eyes fixed upon the floor. He never heard one word of it, but was deeply intent upon his own thoughts. At length he spoke in a full, collected, and firm voice: “Lord Norwood I am, as you have told me, perfectly unfitted to pronounce upon transactions so very unlike every pursuit in which my life has been passed. I am alike ignorant of the feelings of those who engage in them, and of the rules of honor by which they are guided; but this I know, that the man whom his equals decline to associate with at home is not recognizable abroad; and that he who leaves his country with shame, cannot reside away from it with credit.” “This would be a very rude speech, Sir Stafford Onslow, even with the palliative preface of your ignorance, if our relative ages admitted any equality between us. I am the least bellicose of men, I believe I can say I may afford to be so. So long, therefore, as you confine such sentiments to yourself, I will never complain of them; but if the time comes that you conceive they should be issued for general circulation--” “Well, my Lord, what then?” “Your son must answer for it, that's all!” said Norwood; and he drew himself up, and fixed his eye steadily on the distant wall of the room, with a look and gesture that made the old man sick at heart. Norwood saw how “his shot told,” and, turning hastily round, said: “This interview, I conclude, has lasted quite long enough for either of us. If you have any further explanations to seek for, let them come through a younger man, and in a more regular form. Good-morning.” Sir Stafford bowed, without speaking, as the other passed out. To have seen them both at that moment, few would have guessed aright on which side lay all the disgrace, and where the spirit of rectitude and honor. Sir Stafford, indeed, was most miserable. If the Viscount's mock explanations did not satisfy a single scruple of his mind, was it not possible they might have sufficed with others more conversant with such matters? Perhaps he is not worse than others of his own class. What would be his feelings if he were to involve George in a quarrel for such a cause? This was a consideration that pressed itself in twenty different forms, each of them enough to appall him. “But the man is a defaulter; he has fled from England with 'shame,'” was the stubborn conviction which no efforts of his casuistry could banish; and the more he reflected on this, the less possible seemed anything like evasion or compromise. CHAPTER XXVI. THE END OF THE FIRST ACT