He heard nothing of the girl's arrival or
departure. Sound travelled but little through the thick walls of the
Tower, and the gallery, muffled with rich carpets, with hangings and
furniture, deadened both step and voice.
The agent was busy with some typewritten evidence that Melrose was
preparing wherewith to fight the Government officials now being sent down
from London to inquire into the state of some portion of the property.
The evidence had been collected by Nash, and Faversham read it with
disgust. He knew well that the great mass of it was perjured stuff,
bought at a high price. Yet both in public and private he would have to
back up all the lies and evasions that his master, and the pack of
obscure hangers-on who lived upon his pay, chose to put forward.
He set his teeth as he read. The iron of his servitude was cutting its
way into life, deeper and deeper. Could he go on bearing it? For weeks he
had lived with Melrose on terms of sheer humiliation--rated, or mocked
at, his advice spurned, the wretched Nash and his crew ostentatiously
preferred to him, even put over him. "No one shall ever say I haven't
earned my money," he would say to himself fiercely, as the intolerable
days went by. His only abiding hope and compensation lay in his intense
belief that Melrose was a dying man. All those feelings of natural
gratitude, with which six months before he had entered on his task,
were long since rooted up. He hated his tyrant, and he wished him dead.
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