Violet Jacob > Flemington

SOCIETY
227
great that David told himself he could scarcely
recognize his quiet brother.
There was abundant reason for it, but Logie
had seemed to be beside himself. He had scarcely
eaten or slept during the short time that he had
been with him, and his face had kept the judge’s
tongue still. After his account of what had hap¬
pened, Balnillo had not returned to the subject
again.
Step by step the judge had gone over all the
circumstances of Flemington’s sudden emergence
from the Den on that windy night, and had seen
how he had himself been cozened and flattered
into the business of the portrait which stood
unfinished, in solitary and very marked dignity,
in the room with the north light. He was a man
who suspected some of his own weaknesses,
though his knowledge did not prevent him from
giving way to them when he thought he could do
so safely, and he remembered the adroit bits of
flattery that his guest had strewn in his path, and
how obligingly he had picked them up. He was
shrewd enough to see all that. He thought of
the sudden departure when Madam Flemington’s
mysterious illness had spirited Archie out of the
house at a moment’s notice, and he saw how he
had contrived to imbue both himself and James
with the idea that he shared their political in¬
terests, without saying one definite word; he
thought of his sigh and the change in his voice as
he spoke of his father’s death “ in exile with his
master.”