You cannot pierce me with a lance
of gold, but wave a wand of sympathy, and I am yours.
There waited upon me in my flat a man who gave his name as Douglas
Sanderson, which may or may not have been his legitimate title. This
was a question into which I never probed, and at the moment of writing
am as ignorant of his true cognomen, if that was not it, as on the
morning he first met me. He was an elderly man of natural dignity and
sobriety, slow in speech, almost sombre in dress. His costume was not
quite that of a professional man, and not quite that of a gentleman. I
at once recognised the order to which he belonged, and a most
difficult class it is to deal with. He was the confidential servant or
steward of some ancient and probably noble family, embodying in
himself all the faults and virtues, each a trifle accentuated, of the
line he served, and to which, in order to produce him and his like,
his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had doubtless been
attached. It is frequently the case that the honour of the house he
serves is more dear to him than it is to the representative of that
house. Such a man is almost always the repository of family secrets; a
repository whose inviolability gold cannot affect, threats sway, or
cajolery influence.
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