The usual reference number followed. Gilead thought a moment, then looked up.
“This, Nestle,” said he, “is hardly out of the common.”
“Hardly, sir,” replied the secretary. “Only the offer of services guarantees it as genuine. But if you would rather it went through the ordinary channels—”
“No,” said Gilead. “If you have nothing better to offer, I will take it. Romance, after all, must walk sometimes on the highway, if we have the eyes to distinguish her. I will undertake this, Nestle.”
He requested Miss Halifax to make an appointment with the advertiser to call on the morning next but one, and there left the matter for the time being.
At the hour specified the expected visitor arrived, and was shut in to his interview with the head, Miss Halifax, as usual, being present. Gilead’s ready sympathy was awakened on his first sight of the young man, who, in addition to a nervous white complexion and troubled eyes, was disfigured by the loss of his right hand, the place of which was supplied by a stump and hook.
The calm eyes of the young plutocrat would yield at first, however, no ground to sentiment. Enough experience had taught him to safeguard his emotions.
“You advertised for help,” he said. “May I ask, in the first instance, your name?”
“Dobell, sir,” answered the stranger, in a low voice—“Felix Dobell.”
He hung his head. He was patently in great mental suffering. His age appeared to be about that of his questioner’s; but some illness of life had lined his face prematurely. In appearance he might have stood—on that line of social demarcation which divides the accepted from the not quite acceptable—for a clerk on the lower grade. But his speech was educated and his dress quiet.