“Yes; but I have no doubt he will be down in a few moments.”
“Time enough,—no hurry in life. They told me below stairs that you were here, and so I came up at once. I thought that I might introduce myself. Paul Dempsey,—Dempsey's Grove. You've heard of me before, eh?”
“I have had that pleasure,” said Forester, with more animation of manner; for now he remembered the face and figure of the worthy Paul, as he had seen both in the large mirror of his mother's drawing-room.
“Ha! I guessed as much,” rejoined Paul, with a chuckling laugh; “the ladies are here, too, ain't they?”
Forester assented, and Paul went on.
“Only heard of it from Bicknell half an hour ago. Took a car, and came off at once. And when did you come?”
Forester stared with amazement at a question whose precise meaning he could not guess at, and to which he could only reply by a half-smile, expressive of his difficulty.
“You were away, weren't you?” asked Dempsey.
“Yes; I have been out of England,” replied Forester, more than ever puzzled how this fact could or ought to have any interest for the other.
“Never be ashamed of it. Soldiering 's very well in its way, though I 'd never any taste for it myself,—none of that martial spirit that stirred the bumpkin as he sang,—