"Let me go, sir," insisted Luke.
"No, hang it, boy, you can't sign my name—not yet anyway. I am not yet a helpless imbecile. Show the young man into the library, Parker. I can't think why Dobson is always in such a confounded hurry about leases—sending a fool of a clerk up at most inconvenient hours."
Still muttering half audibly, he walked to the library door, which Parker held open for him, and even this he did not do without surreptitiously taking hold of Luke's hand and giving it a friendly squeeze. For a moment it seemed as if Luke would follow him, despite contrary orders. He paused, undecided, standing in the middle of the room, Louisa's kind gray eyes following his slightest movement.
Jim stolidly pulled the cigar box toward him, and Edie, with chin resting in both hands, looked sulky and generally out of sorts.
Parker—silent and correct of mien—had closed the library door behind his master, and now with noiseless tread he crossed the dining-room and opened the other door—the one that gave on the hall. Louisa instinctively turned her eyes from Luke and saw—standing in the middle of the hall—a young man in jacket suit and overcoat, who had looked up, with palpitating eagerness expressed in his face, the moment he caught sight of Parker.
It was the same man who had lifted his hat to Luke and to herself in Battersea Park this very morning. Luke saw him too and apparently also recognized him.
"That's why he bowed to us, Luke—in the park—you remember?" she said as soon as the door had once more closed on Parker and the visitor.
"Funny that you didn't know him," she continued since Luke had made no comment.
"I didn't," he remarked curtly.
"Didn't what?"