“He has this very day turned me out of his house,” said Ralph, and he briefly told the lawyer what had passed. “This seems a serious matter,” said Mr. Marriott. “We must talk it over together, but in the meantime, I will send round for your things, and you will, I hope, spend the night here. After dinner, we will put our heads together, and see what can be done.” Ralph could only gratefully accept the hospitality, and it proved to be just the genuine old-fashioned hospitality that does the heart good, and is as unlike its forced counterfeit as real fruit is unlike its waxen imitation. Old Mr. Marriott’s sister proved to be one of those eternally young people who at seventy have more capacity for enjoying life than many girls of eighteen. Her vivacious face, with its ever varying expression, her kindly human interest in all things and all people, did more to drive bitter recollections from Ralph’s mind than anything else could have done. Moreover, he lost his heart to pretty Katharine Marriott, though she was many years his senior. Her large, serious, brown eyes, and her air of gentle dignity seemed to him perfection; he could have imagined her to be some stately Spanish lady in her black, lace dress, and though she said little to him, her whole manner was full of sympathetic charm. When the ladies had left the table, Mr. Marriott began to make further inquiries as to what had passed that afternoon. “Is it not possible,” he suggested, “that you too readily took Sir Matthew at his word? He has been kind to you all these years, has he not?” “He has carried out what he undertook,” said Ralph, “and twice, no--three times--I remember that he really spoke kindly to me. For the rest of the six years he has never noticed me at all except to find fault.” “Do you mean that you got into trouble? That your school reports were bad or anything of that sort?” “No, they were decent enough, and I was never exactly in any scrape, but somehow, in little ways I always managed to displease him; spoke too much, or too little, or too loud, or not distinctly. If one made the least noise in coming into a room or closing a door he couldn’t endure it, or if one stole in with elaborate care and quietness, he would start and say a stealthy step was intolerable to him. As to breakfast, the only meal we ever had with him as children, it used to be a time of torture, for if you held your knife or fork in a way which did not exactly meet his ideal way of holding a knife and fork, he made you feel that you had committed a crime.” “So there was never much love lost between you,” said Mr. Marriott, with a smile. “Well it is what I feared would happen when I last saw you. Did he often mention your father’s name?”