CHAPTER L.
AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH.
At dinner the next evening Mr. Ffrench had a story to tell. It was the rather exciting story of the completion of Murdoch's labor, the night attack and his sudden departure. Exciting as it was, however, Mr. Ffrench did not relate it in his most vivid manner. His nervous ailments had increased of late, and he was not in a condition to be vivacious and dramatic. The incident came from him rather tamely, upon the whole.
"If it is the success he thinks it is," he terminated, "he is a made man—and he is not the fellow to deceive himself. Well," he said, rather drearily, "I have said it would be so."
As Haworth had foreseen, Saint Méran appeared upon the scene again. He was present when the story was told, and was much interested in it as a dramatic incident bringing the peculiarities of the manufacturing class of Broxton into strong play.
"If they had murdered him," he remarked with critical niceness, "it would have been the most tragic of tragedies. On the very eve of his life's success. A tragedy indeed! And it is not bad either that it should have been his master who saved him."
"Why do you say master?" said Miss Ffrench, coldly.
"Pardon me. I thought——"
