When Griselda went down to the little lobby, she found Mr. Travers with a flushed and excited face, and Mr. Herschel trying to calm him.
"Take my word for it, my young friend, there are always two necessary to make a quarrel, and I should beware of yonder dandy, who bears no good character."
"I will take your advice as far as in me lies, sir; but if he ever dares to speak again, as just now--in the presence of others, too!--to dare to speak lightly of her----I will not pick the quarrel, but if he picks it, then I am no coward."
Dr. William Watson, who had come for a second time that day to visit the "moon-gazer" of the night before, had been a somewhat unwilling witness of the high words which had passed between Sir Maxwell Danby and Leslie Travers, and now seemed impatient to be taken upstairs to inspect the process of grinding and polishing the reflector for great twenty and thirty foot mirrors, which was then achieved by persistent manual labour.
Dr. William Watson was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and had come to invite Mr. Herschel to join the Philosophical Society in Bath, which invitation he accepted, and by this means came more prominently before the world.
Mr. Travers led Griselda to her chair, and as the boy lighted the torch at the door--for it was quite dark--a small and piteous voice was heard:
"Oh, madam! cannot you do something for us? I heard Mr. Herschel was kind, but he is hard and stern."
"Mr. Herschel never gives alms," Leslie Travers said; "be off!"
"Nay, sir; wait. The child looks wretched and sad. What is it?" Griselda asked.
"Oh, madam! my father was engaged to play at the theatre, and he has fallen down and cannot perform the part. Mr. Palmer is hard, so hard, he says"--the child's voice faltered--"he says it was drink that made him fall--and he has no pity; and we are starving."
The group on the steps of that house in King Street was a study for an artist. The shuddering, weeping child; the stolid chairman; the link-boy, with the torch, which cast a lurid light upon the group; the young man holding the hand of the tall and graceful lady, hooded and cloaked in scarlet, edged with white fur; then the open door behind, where an oil lamp shone dimly, and the maid's figure, in her large white cap and apron, made a white light in the gloom. It was a picture indeed, suggestive of the sharp contrasts of life, and yet no one could have divined that in that scene lay concealed the elements of a story so tragic and sorrowful, yet to be developed, and then unsuspected and unknown.