Aynesworth nodded a little curtly. He was not very favorably impressed with his visitor.
“Well!”
Barrington leaned forward in his chair.
“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said, “you have made for yourself some reputation as a writer. Your name has been familiar to me for some time. I was at college, I believe, with your uncle, Stanley Aynesworth.”
He paused. Aynesworth said nothing.
“I want to know,” Barrington continued impressively, “what has induced you to accept a position with such a man as Seton?”
“That,” Aynesworth declared, “is easily answered. I was not looking for a secretaryship at all, or anything of the sort, but I chanced to hear his history one night, and I was curious to analyze, so far as possible, his attitude towards life and his fellows, on his reappearance in it. That is the whole secret.”
Barrington leaned back in his chair, and glanced thoughtfully at his companion.
“You know the story of his misadventures, then?” he remarked.
“I know all about his imprisonment, and the cause of it,” Aynesworth said quietly.