The servant returned to say that her Ladyship was going to dress, but would see his Lordship on her way downstairs.
“Whose card is this? Where did this come from?” asked Lord Culduff, as he petulantly turned it round and round, trying to read the name.
“Oh, that's Mr. Cutbill. He called twice yesterday. I can't imagine what has brought him to Rome.”
“Perhaps I might hazard a guess,” said Lord Culduff, with a grim smile. “But I'll not see him. You'll say, Bramleigh, that I am very much engaged; that I have a press of most important business; that the Cardinal Secretary is always here. Say anything, in short, that will mean No, Cutbill!”
“He 's below at this moment.”
“Then get rid of him! My dear fellow, the A B C of your craft is to dismiss the importunate. Go and send him off!”
Lord Culduff turned to caress his whiskers as the other left the room; and having gracefully disposed a very youthful curl of his wig upon his forehead, was smiling a pleasant recognition of himself in the glass, when voices in a louder tone than were wont to be heard in such sacred precincts startled him. He listened, and suddenly the door was opened rudely, and Mr. Cutbill entered, Temple Bramleigh falling back as the other came forward, and closing the door behind.
“So, my Lord, I was to be told you'd not see me, eh?” said Cutbill, his face slightly flushed by a late altercation.
“I trusted, sir, when my private secretary had told you I was engaged, that I might have counted upon not being broken in upon.”
“There you were wrong, then,” said Cutbill, who divested himself of an overcoat, threw it on the back of a chair, and came forward towards the fire. “Quite wrong. A man does n't come a thousand and odd miles to be 'not-at homed' at the end of it.”