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shillings a week to spend in drink. And he nobly spent it all. He drank in the morning, at noon, and at night. He drank whenever he could. He had been three years with Mr. Lilliecrip, and during the whole of that time that gentleman had never once offered him, Dicky used to reflect with indignation, even so much as a glass of pale ale.

"You are late," said Mr. Lilliecrip, looking at his watch; "a quarter of an hour late, sir, and time presses. Let us begin at once."

39

CHAPTER IV.

OU are late, Mr. Carew," said Mr. Lilliecrip, severely; "a whole quarter of an hour late."

Dicky's employer was sitting at a table, a pile of manuscripts before him, which he was annotating and correcting. He lifted his

head, showing a face perfectly pale and colourless. It was a long face, and there was plenty of it, because the cheeks and chin were hairless, while on the lip was a heavy white moustache. His hair was long and silvery white; his features were of a kind you do not easily forget, being straight and regular; his forehead was high, but narrow; the upper part of his nose had that very delicate carving which goes with persons of strong artistic tendencies, but little sympathy; his eyes were clear and bright, but rather shifty.

It was a face still extremely handsome, though its owner was well on the shady side of sixty, and might in youth, when the expression would be a little different, have been of wonderful beauty. But it was a face of which Dicky, at least, was heartily weary. Its changeless set regularity, in which not a wrinkle or a crow'sfoot but seemed in its appointed place, was a kind of nightmare to him. He hated this man, who was his chief support; he loathed this daily task of sitting at the table and writing, without being allowed to say a word himself, or to ask a question, at his master's dictation; he kicked against the decrees of Fate which bound him to Mr. Lilliecrip's rooms; he envied those happier brethren who were able to lounge all day in the reading-room of the Museum. But though he dared not rebel openly, in secret he nursed daring plans of revenge, and would imagine, while he was writing, little dramas, in which Mr. Lilliecrip and himself were the only figures. The former was at his mercy; he should implore for pardon-Dicky never clearly made out in his own mind how the situation was to be worked up to and should be spurned with contumely.

He should pray for a day's grace, and should be reminded bitterly, but with overwhelming dignity, of his bond:-"The bond and no more— give me the bond." He should be dismissed into misery with the mocking laugh of revenge. There was a story which Dicky had once read, of a man who, for some unexplained reason of his own, hounded down and persecuted another, following him from one scene of distress to another, and thence to a worse, with an insatiable thirst of revenge. This story Dicky appropriated to himself, and used to rehearse it mentally while he wrote. His imagination was as active as his brain was lazy; and while his fingers moved mechanically, whole dramas were working themselves out in his mind, consisting entirely of separate tableaux without any connecting plot.

"Come," said Mr. Lilliecrip, "let us go on."

Dicky took up his pen, adjusted the blotting pad, and waited.

Mr. Lilliecrip slowly rose, and began to walk up and down the room with hands behind his back. Dicky recommenced the melodrama of revenge where he had left it off the day before;

but his eye, as mild as that of a milch cow, only showed habitual attention to the words for which he waited, while his fingers expressed by their attitude an eagerness to begin, almost bordering on enthusiasm.

The Hermit was dressed in a long, grey, cashmere dressing-gown, which reached to his heels, and was tied round the waist by means of a bright crimson silk scarf. Falling open, it disclosed a shirt front of irreproachable fit and brilliant whiteness, set with small diamond studs; his neck was adorned with a collar, in which was a tiny black ribbon in the neatest of bows; his hands were small and white-the hands of a gentleman. As he passed at each turn before the looking glass on the mantelshelf, he stopped and looked at himself with the complacency of self-satisfaction. His figure was tall, thin, and stooping; his expression was cold, self-contained, and repellent of familiarity; his step was firm and elastic.

"Where did I leave off yesterday?" he said. "Let me consider."

"We were with William the Fourth, sir," said his secretary.

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