“You are looking,” said he, “to see how I compare with that picture over your head. Well, as I take it, that picture, though painted sixteen years ago, does not do me justice. What do you think?”
Clarke, somewhat taken aback, as much by the smile which accompanied these words, as by the words themselves, hesitated for a moment and then boldly said:
“What you have gained in worldly knowledge and intercourse with men you have lost in that set purpose which gives character to the physiognomy and fills all its traits with individuality. In that face on the wall I see the inventor, but in yours, as it now confronts me, the——”
“Well, what?”
“The centre of this very delightful group,” finished Clarke, suavely.
It was said with a bow which included the whole assembly. Earle laughed and one or two about him frowned, but Clarke, heeding nobody, asked if he could not have a moment’s conversation with his host in the hall.
Earle, with a side glance directed, as Clarke thought, toward the one slight man in the corner whose face was unfamiliar to him, shook his head at this suggestion and blurted out: “That’s against the rules. When the Hail-Fellow-Well-Met Society comes together it is as one body. What is whispered in one corner is supposed to be heard in the next. Out with your business then, here. I have no secrets and can scarcely suppose you to have.”
If this was meant to frighten Clarke off it did not succeed. He determined to speak, and speak as he was commanded right there and then.
“Well,” said he, “since you force me to take the town into our confidence, I will. Your daughter——”
“Ah,” quoth Earle, genially, “she has remembered, then, that she has a father. She sends me her love, probably. Dear girl, how kind of her on this wintry night!”