Then, with gentle
insistence, he led Mary away. They left the old man, propped up by the
high stool on which his feet rested, seated far back in the great chair,
hard by Captain Duggle's grave, where the scepter lay on a carpet of
gold. The tall candles burnt on either side of his throne, imparting a
far-off semblance of ceremonial state.
Thus died, unmarried, in the seventy-first year of his age, Aloysius
William Saffron, formerly of Exeter, Surveyor and Auctioneer. He had run,
on the whole, a creditable course; starting from small beginnings, and
belonging to a family more remarkable for eccentricity than for any solid
merit, he had built up a good practice; he had made money and put it by;
he enjoyed a good name for financial probity. But he was held to be a
vain, fussy, self-important, peacocky fellow; very self-centered also and
(as Beaumaroy had indicated) impatient of the family and social
obligations which most men recognize, even though often unwillingly. As
the years gathered upon his head, these characteristics were intensified.
On the occasion of some trifling set-back in business--a rival cut him
out in a certain negotiation--He threw up everything and disappeared from
his native town.
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