"That is my name, sir," he said, with a kind of kingly affability, "and I am here in obedience to your summons."
CHAPTER XXIV.
"MAD AS A HATTER!"
Mr. Arnheim looked rather puzzled for a moment, then he looked as if he remembered.
"Oh, yes, yes, Mr. Lisle," he said, with a slightly foreign accent; he was German. "I remember——."
"You sent for me, doubtless, to make arrangements for the inclusion of some of my pictures in your coming exhibition," said Francis Lisle in a nervously pompous voice, which quivered with suppressed excitement and importance.
"Not exact——," began Mr. Arnheim, but he happened to glance at Leslie, and something in her pale, wan face stopped him. He was a shrewd man, and the anxiety of the daughter of the half pompous, half frightened creature before him touched him.
"Possibly, possibly, Mr.—er—Lisle," he said. "But my reason for communicating with you was the fact that I had been requested by—" he was going to say Lord Auchester, but he glanced at Leslie's face again, and seeing the imploring expression on it, faltered a moment, then went on suavely—"by a valued client of mine to procure a work by your hand."