“The Great Man will be very pleased,” the other replied. ‘The Great Man’ was the designation generally used by the diplomatic staff in speaking of Lord Blair.
As they ascended the steps Daniel Lane cast a pair of searching blue eyes upon the resplendent figure of the girl in the chair. In the sheen of the moon her dress, of flimsy material, seemed to array her as it were in a mist; and the diamonds about her throat and in her hair—for she was wearing family jewels—gleamed like magic points of light.
“Got a party on?” he asked, with somewhat disconcerting directness.
“A dance,” Rupert Helsingham replied, stiffly, “in honour of Lady Muriel’s arrival. But let me introduce you.”
He turned to the girl, and effected the introduction. “Mr. Lane,” he said, “is one of your father’s most trusted friends. I don’t know what we should do sometimes without his counsel and advice. He knows the native mind inside out.”
Now that the man had removed his hat, Lady Muriel felt sure that she had seen him before, but where, she could not recall. The face was unforgettable. The broad forehead from which the rough mud-coloured hair was thrown back; the heavy brows which screened the steady blue eyes; the bronzed skin; the white, regular teeth—these features she had looked at across a drawing-room somewhere. His bulk and figure, too, were not of the kind to be forgotten easily: the powerful neck, the great shoulders, the mighty chest, the strong hands, were all familiar to her.
“I think we’ve met before,” she ventured.
“Yes, I fancy we have,” he replied. “Use’n’t you to wear your hair in two fat pigtails?”
“Four years ago,” she laughed.
“Then I guess it was four years ago that we met,” he said; and without further remark he turned to Rupert Helsingham, asking whether and when he might see Lord Blair. “I was going to ring at the side door there,” he explained, pointing to the door behind them which led directly into the corridor before the Great Man’s study. “That’s my usual way in: I’ve no use for the main entrance and the footman.”