in leather, with the weak eyes, would see me; so I bade him in a high voice bid Mr. Simon step up, and setting myself before my table of paper, engage in writing a letter (already half writ), while Dawson slips out into the next room.
"Take a seat, Mr. Steward," says I, when Simon entered, cap in hand, and casting a very prying, curious look around. "I must keep you a minute or two"; and so I feign to be mighty busy, and give him scope for observation.
"Well, sir," says I, finishing my letter with a flourish, and setting it aside. "How do you fare?"
He raised his hands, and dropped them like so much lead on his knees, casting up his eyes and giving a doleful shake of his head for a reply.
"Nothing is amiss at the Court, I pray—your lady Mistress Godwin is well?"
"I know not, friend," says he. "She hath taken my keys, denied me entrance to her house, and left me no privilege of my office save the use of the lodge house. Thus am I treated like a faithless servant, after toiling night and day all these years, and for her advantage, rather than mine own."
"That has to be proved, Mr. Steward," says I, severely; "for you must admit that up to this present she has had no reason to love you, seeing that, had her fate been left in your hands, she would now be in Barbary, and like to end her days there. How, then, can she think but that you had some selfish, wicked end in denying her the service we, who are strangers, have rendered her?"
"Thee speakest truth, friend, and yet thee knowest that I observed only the righteous prudence of an honest servant."
