“Ha!” replied the other, not understanding the correction. “I remember one day, when Townsend—”
“D——n Townsend!” said Haggerstone.
“No, not Dan,—Tom Townsend. That fellow who was always with Mathews.”
“Walk a little quicker, and you may talk as much balderdash as you please,” said the other, buttoning up his coat, and resolving not to pay the slightest attention to his companion's agreeability.
“Who is here?” asked Haggerstone, as he followed the servant up the stairs.
“Nobody but Count Petrolaffsky, sir.”
“Un Comte à bon compte,” muttered Haggerstone to himself, always pleased when he could be sarcastic, even in soliloquy. “They 'll find it no easy matter to get a tenant for this house nowadays. Florence is going down, sir, and will soon be little better than Boulogne-sur-Mer.”
“Very pleasant, indeed, for a month in summer,” responded Foglass, who had only caught up the last word. “Do you think of going there?”
“Going there!” shouted out the other, in a voice that made misconception impossible. “About as soon as I should take lodgings in Wapping for country air!”
This speech brought them to the door of the drawing-room, into which Haggerstone now entered, with that peculiar step which struck him as combining the jaunty slide of a man of fashion with the martial tread of an old soldier.