“It might be presumptuous in me, perhaps, to stand forward on such ground; but I, too, have seen something of life.”
“You! you!” said M'Caskey, with a most frank impertinence in his tone.
“Yes, sir, I, I,—Mr. Skeffington Darner, Her Majesty's Representative and Chargé d'Affaires at this Court.”
“Where the deuce was it I heard your name? Darner—Darner—Skeff—Skeffy—I think they called you? Who could it be that mentioned you?”
“Not impossibly the newspapers, though I suspect they did not employ the familiarity you speak of.”
“Well, Skeff, what's all this business we're bent on? What wildgoose chase are we after here?”
Darner was almost sick with indignation at the fellow's freedom; he nearly burst with the effort it cost him to repress his passion; but he remembered how poor Tony Butler's fate lay in the balance, and that if anything should retard his journey by even an hour, that one hour might decide his friend's destiny.
“Might I take the liberty to observe, sir, that our acquaintance is of the very shortest; and until I shall desire, which I do not anticipate, the privilege of addressing you by your Christian name—”
“I am called Milo,” said M'Caskey; “but no man ever called me so but the late Duke of Wellington; and once, indeed, in a moment of enthusiasm, poor Byron.”
“I shall not imitate them, and I desire that you may know me as Mr. Damer.”