The room was full of the smoke which emanates from a good Havana, and the smoker was reclining in a comfortable chair, with his feet on another, and a glass of, apparently, soda and brandy by his elbow.
He was a young man, who if he possessed no other qualities, had been remarkably favored by the gods in one particular; he was perhaps as singularly handsome a specimen of the human race as it is possible to conceive. So finely cut and delicately molded was his face that it would have been considered effeminate but for the mustache which, like his hair and eyebrows, and the long lashes that swept the clear olive cheek, was a silky, lustrous black. It was a face which Van Dyke would have loved to paint, a face which, once seen, lingered in one’s memory, and it wore an added charm, a certain devil-may-care, debonnaire expression which at once attracted attention and lent it impressiveness.
“Hallo, Spenser, is that you?” he exclaimed, with a laugh, as he rose and held out his hand, as white—though not so soft and fat—as the philanthropist’s own. “An unexpected honor! Sit down! You don’t mind the smoke, do you?” he asked, as Mr. Spenser Churchill coughed two or three “wow, wows” behind his handkerchief. “Rather thick, isn’t it? The room’s small, you see, and I’ve been smoking for—oh, Lord knows how long! Have anything? Brandy and soda, eh? All right!” and, going to the window, he leaned out, and called some instructions to an urchin below.
“My dear Percy, isn’t that—er—rather a public way of procuring refreshments?” said Mr. Churchill.
The young fellow laughed.
“Well, perhaps it is,” he admitted. “But it saves trouble, and they’re used to it! There are always some youngsters outside glad to earn a penny, and the ‘Pig and Whistle’ keeps a very good article, so they say! Have a cigar?” and he pushed a box toward him. “You’ll find them all right, I think. And now, what brings you to the aristocratic regions of Soho?”
Mr. Spenser Churchill lit his cigar and took two or three preliminary puffs before answering, the young man leaning against the mantel-shelf in graceful abandon, and watching him with a faintly-amused curiosity; then the great philanthropist said, in his soft, dulcet voice:
“I have come to make your fortune, Percy!”
CHAPTER XX.
AN EXTRAORDINARY PROPOSAL.