"I ast him for his name, Sir Charles, and he only says, 'Tell your master,' he says, 'that a gentleman,' he says, 'wants to see him.'"
"Oh, tell him that he must call some other time and send in his business. I can't see him now; I'm just going out for a drive with Lady Mitford. Tell him to call again."
"There was a time, and not very long ago either," said Sir Charles, taking up the paper as Banks retired, "that if I'd been told that a man who wouldn't give his name wanted to speak to me, I should have slipped out the back-way and run for my life. But, thank God, that's all over now.--Well, Banks, what now?"
"The party is very arbitrary, Sir Charles; he won't take 'no' for an answer; and when I told him you must know his business, he bust out larfin' and told me to say he was an old messmate of yours, and had sailed with you on board the Albatross."
A red spot burned on Sir Charles Mitford's cheek as he laid the newspaper aside and said, "Show this person into the library, and deny me to every one while he remains. Let your mistress be told I am prevented by business from driving with her to-day. Look sharp!"
Mr. Banks was not accustomed to be told to "look sharp!" and during his three-months' experience of his master he had never heard him speak in so petulant a tone. "I'd no idea he'd been a seafarin' gent," he said downstairs, "or I'd a never undertook the place. The tempers of those ship-captains is awful."
When Banks had left the room Sir Charles walked to the sideboard, and leant heavily against it while he poured out and drank a liqueur-glass of brandy.
"The Albatross!" he muttered with white lips; "which of them can it be? I thought I had heard the last of that cursed name. Banks said a man; it's not the worst of them, then. That's lucky."
He went into the library and seated himself in an armchair facing the door. He had scarcely done so when Banks gloomily ushered in the stranger.
He was a middle-sized dark man, dressed in what seemed to be a seedy caricature of the then prevailing fashion. His coat had once been a bright-claret colour, but was now dull, threadbare, and frayed round the edges of the breast-pocket, out of which peeped the end of a flashy silk handkerchief. He had no shirt-collar apparent; but wore round his neck a dirty blue-satin scarf with two pins, one large and one small, fastened together by a little chain. His trousers were of a staring green shawl-pattern, cut so as to hide nearly all the boot and tightly strapped down, as was the fashion of those days; and the little of his boots visible was broken and shabby. Sir Charles looked at him hard and steadily, then gave a sigh of relief. He had never seen the man before. He pointed to a chair, into which his visitor dropped with an easy swagger; then crossed his legs, and looking at Sir Charles, said familiarly, "And how are you?"