His lip curled into a sneer of ineffable contempt, for his shrewd eyes read to the bottom of the lad's mean soul and saw there clearly writ the confidence that emboldened him to voice that insult to the man he must know for his father.

Standing there, he compared the two, marvelling deeply how they came to be father and son.

A likeness he saw now between them, yet a likeness that seemed but to mark the difference.

The one harsh, resolute, and manly, for all his reckless living and his misfortunes; the other mild, effeminate, hypocritical and shifty.

He read it not on their countenances alone, but in every line of their figures as they stood, and in his heart he cursed himself for having been the instrument to disclose the relationship in which they stood.
The youth's insolent question was followed by a spell of silence.
Crispin could not believe that he had heard aright.