"I'm nearer voamiting, though, than you would fancy," said my lord.
The blood rose to Archie's brow.
"I beg your pardon, I should have said that you had accepted my affront.
. . . I admit it was an affront; I did not think to apologise, but I do,
I ask your pardon; it will not be so again, I pass you my word of
honour. . . . I should have said that I admired your magnanimity with -
this - offender," Archie concluded with a gulp.
"I have no other son, ye see," said Hermiston. "A bonny one I have
gotten! But I must just do the best I can wi' him, and what am I to do?
If ye had been younger, I would have wheepit ye for this rideeculous
exhibeetion. The way it is, I have just to grin and bear. But one
thing is to be clearly understood. As a faither, I must grin and bear
it; but if I had been the Lord Advocate instead of the Lord Justice-
Clerk, son or no son, Mr. Erchibald Weir would have been in a jyle the
night."
Archie was now dominated. Lord Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet
the son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation of
the man's self in the man's office.
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