“That’s not true!” Lanty answered warmly. “How could I achieve anything without your consent? In the end, everything comes to you, and you’ve never hindered. There’s no better landlord in the kingdom.” “It’s easy to be kind without lifting a finger; easy to agree to a judgment you know to be right; but there’s a final responsibility that is mine and mine only, and that I’ve never faced. In this matter of the Lugg, for instance----” There came to Lanty a memory of the meeting at which, with a single look, Bluecaster had passed the fate of the bank into his hands. “Of course you couldn’t know!” he exclaimed incredulously. “That’s only Brack’s raving. But”--he stopped suddenly, stared, stammering and half-rising--“you don’t mean that you agreed with him, thought the Lugg ought to go--did not trust it, all the time?” Bluecaster bowed his head without reply. “You thrust the problem on me, convinced in your own mind of the one right course--bade me answer for us both, unjust as it was, biased as you knew I must be, certain that my answer would not be yours? I took it that you had no opinion, could not and would not choose. For that reason only I stepped into your place. Have I failed so far in my duty that you dared not set your will against mine?” Doubt assailed him, the fearful doubt besetting the strong of the unconvincedness of the consenting weak. “My lord--was it _that_?” “No, it was not that,” said Bluecaster. “It must have been! I thought you wanted help--but it was that.” “It was _not_ that!” Bluecaster spoke very firmly. “Sit down again, man, and listen to me. We’re neither of us fit to see very clearly to-night, but I want to get this said. You’ve never bullied me--don’t worry your head about that. You’ve been the stronger man, that’s all, and you’re suffering for it. It’s always unfair on the servant to be the stronger man. But sometimes”--he smiled his pleasant smile--“sometimes, Lancaster, old man, the master is jolly glad of it!