He was by himself the evening of the day after that on which he had seen Paul Derinzy walking with Daisy in Kensington Gardens. He had had a light dinner at his club, and thence walked straight away home, where, on his arrival at his den, he had lit a big pipe and thrown himself into an easy-chair, and sat watching the blue smoke curling above his head, and pondering over the present and the future of his friend. George Wainwright had a stronger feeling than mere liking for Paul; there was a touch of romance in the regard which the good-looking, bright, easy-going young man had aroused in his steady, sober, practical senior. George was too much a man of the world to thrill with horror because he had seen his friend in the company of a pretty girl, and come across what was evidently a lovers' meeting. But his knowledge of Paul's character was large and well-founded; in the mere glance which he had got of the pair as they stood together in the act of saying adieu, he had caught an expression in his friend's face which intuitively led him to feel that the woman who could call up such a look of intense earnest devotion was no mere passing light-o'-love; and as George thought over the scene, and reproduced it, time after time, from the storehouse of his memory, he puffed fiercer blasts from his pipe, and shook his head in an unsettled, not to say desponding manner.
While he was thus occupied he heard steps on the gravel-walk outside, then a tap at the door. Opening it, Paul Derinzy stood before him.
"Just the man I was thinking about, and come exactly in the nick of time! Alma quies optata, veni! Not that you can be called alma quies, you restless bird of the night! What's the matter? what are you making signs about?" asked George.
"That idiot, Billy Dunlop, is with me," replied Paul, grinning; "he is doing some of his pantomime nonsense outside;" and, indeed, George Wainwright, peering out in the darkness, could make out a stout figure approaching with cautious gestures, which, when it emerged into the lamplight, proved to be Mr. Dunlop.
"Hallo, Billy! what are you at? Come in, man; light a pipe, and be happy."
But Mr. Dunlop, true to his character of comic man, did not enter the room quietly, but came in with a little rush, and then, his knees knocking together in simulated abject terror, asked:
"Am I safe? Can none of them get at me?"
"None of whom?"
"None of the patients. I was in such a fright coming up that garden, I could scarcely speak. I thought I saw eyes behind every laurestinus; and--I suppose the staff of keepers is adequate, in case any of 'em should prove rampagious?"
"Oh yes, it's all right. Have you never been here before?"