Shrewsbury by Stanley J. Weyman

It must be confessed that after that it was with a sore shrinking and foreboding of punishment I prepared to obey Mr. Ferguson's summons, and at the hour he had fixed knocked at his door. Hitherto he had always come to me; and even so and on my own ground I had suffered enough at his hands. What I had to expect, therefore, when entirely in his power I failed to guess, but on that account felt only the greater apprehension; so that it was with relief I recognised, firstly, as soon as I crossed the threshold, a peculiar neatness and cleanliness in the rooms, as if Ferguson at home were something different from Ferguson abroad; and secondly, that he was not alone, but entertained a visitor.

Neither of these things, to be sure, altered his bearing towards me, or took from the brutality with which it was his humour to address me; but as his opening words announced that the visitor's business lay with me, they relieved me from my worst apprehension -- namely, that I was to be called to account for the steps I had taken to escape; at the same time that they amused me with the hope of better treatment, since no man could deal with me worse than he had.