"I beg Mr. Ludlow a thousand pardons!" said Caterham, who had forgotten the announcement of Geoffrey's marriage, and who hailed the recalling of the past with intense gratification. "I'm delighted to see you, Mr. Ludlow; and very grateful to you for coming to fill up so agreeably some of our young lady's blank time. If I thought you were a conventional man, I should make you a pretty Conventional speech of gratulation on your marriage; but as I'm sure you're something much better, I leave that to be inferred."
"You are very good," said Geoff. "Annie was just saying that I should introduce My wife to her, and--"
"Of course, of course!" said Caterham, a little dashed by the familiarity of the "Annie." "I hope, to see Mrs. Ludlow here; not merely as a visitor to a wretched bachelor like myself; but I'm sure my mother would be very pleased to welcome her, and will, if you please, do herself the honour of calling on Mrs. Ludlow.
"Thank you, Arthur; you are very kind, and I appreciate it," said Annie, in a low voice, crossing to his chair; "but my going will be a different thing; I mean, as an old friend of Geoff's, I may go and see his wife."
An old friend of Geoff's! Still the same bond between them, in which he had no part--an intimacy with which he had nothing to do.
"Of course," said he; "nothing could be more natural."
"Little Annie coming to be introduced to Margaret!" thought Geoff, as he walked homeward, the lesson over. This, then, was to be Margaret's first introduction to his old friend. Not much fear of their not getting on together. And yet, on reflection, Geoff was not so sure of that, after all.
[CHAPTER VI.]
AT HOME.
The people of Lowbar, lusty citizens with suburban residences--lawyers, proctors, and merchants, all warm people in money matters--did not think much of the advent into their midst of a man following an unrecognised profession, which had no ledger-and-day-book responsibility, employed no clerks, and ministered to no absolute want. It was not the first time indeed that they had heard of an artist being encamped among them; for in the summer several brethren of the brush were tempted to make a temporary sojourn in the immediate vicinity of the broad meadows and suburban prettinesses. But these were mere birds of passage, who took lodgings over some shop in the High Street, and who were never seen save by marauding schoolboys or wandering lovers, who would come suddenly upon a bearded man smoking a pipe, and sketching away under the shade of a big white umbrella. To wear a beard and, in addition to that enormity, to smoke a pipe, were in themselves sufficient, in the eyes of the worthy inhabitants of Lowbar, to prove that a man was on the high-road to destruction; but they consoled themselves with the reflection that the evil-doer was but a sojourner amongst them. Now, however, had arrived a man in the person of Geoffrey Ludlow, who not merely wore a beard and smoked a pipe, but further flew in the face of all decently-constituted society by having a beautiful wife. And this man had not come into lodgings, but had regularly established himself in poor Mrs. Pierce's house, which he had had all done up and painted and papered and furnished in a manner--so at least Mr. Brandram the doctor said--that might be described as gorgeous.