"It is not a visitor, Mr. Curwen," said I, "but a fugitive;" and I handed to him Lord Derwentwater's letter.
"Indeed?" said he, all his suavity rekindling. "A fugitive!" and he spoke as though to be a fugitive was a very fine and enviable thing. "You will take a chair, Mr.——"
"Clavering," I added.
"Of Blackladies?" he inquired
"Of Blackladies," said I.
"You are very welcome, Mr. Clavering," said he, and he broke open the seal and read the letter through, with many interruptions of "Shield us!" and "To be sure!" and with many a glance over his spectacles at me. He was a tall man, though his shoulders stooped as if he spent many an evening over his folio, and I should say of sixty years and more. He wore his own white hair, which was very long and fine, making a silver frame to as beautiful a face, except one, as it has ever been my lot to see. The features, it may be, were over-delicately chiselled, the cheeks too bloodless, the eyes too large, if you looked for a man of dominating activity. It was the face of a dreamer, no doubt, but there would be nothing ignoble in the dreams.
"You are yet more welcome, Mr. Clavering," said he as he folded up the letter; "shelter indeed you shall have, and such comfort as we can add thereto, for so long as you will be pleased to stay with us. Nay," said he, checking me, "I know what you would say, but we are solitary people here and the debt will be with us."
"That can hardly be," said I, "since I bring danger to you by my presence."
"Some while ago," he replied, "I would not have denied it, though I should have welcomed you no less. But since my fortunes have declined and I have grown into years, I have taken little part in politics and keep much within my doors. They will not come here, I think, to look for you. It is a consolation for my poverty," said he with the simplest dignity, "that I can therefore offer you a safer harbourage. But indeed it is with you that the times have gone hard. We are not so solitary but that now and again a scrap of news will float to us, and we have heard of you. You were much at one time in Paris?" And his voice of a sudden took on a pleasant eagerness.
"Yes," I replied, "though I saw little of the town."