The father held out his hand in silence. The heavy portiere
dropped noiselessly behind the son, and he went up the wide,
curving stairway to his own room.

Meantime John Weightman sat in his carved chair in the Jacobean
dining-room. He felt strangely old and dull. The portraits of
beautiful women by Lawrence and Reynolds and Raeburn, which had
often
seemed like real company to him, looked remote and uninteresting.

He fancied something cold and almost unfriendly in their
expression,
as if they were staring through him or beyond him. They cared
nothing for
his principles, his hopes, his disappointments, his successes;
they belonged to another world, in which he had no place. At
this he felt
a vague resentment, a sense of discomfort that he could not have
defined
or explained. He was used to being considered, respected,
appreciated at his full value in every region, even in that of
his own dreams.

Presently he rang for the butler, telling him to close the house
and
not to sit up, and walked with lagging steps into the long
library,
where the shaded lamps were burning. His eye fell upon the low
shelves
full of costly books, but he had no desire to open them. Even