“I am your brother, Aubrey; and I, as well as you, am my brother’s keeper in so far as concerns his welfare. It is over a month since you visited us, and your mother and Lady Lettice believe you to be with your Lord in Essex. How come you hither, so late at night, and at another door than your own?”
“No business of yours! May a man not call to see his tailor?”
“Men do not commonly go to their tailors after shops be shut.”
“Oh, of course, you wot all touching shop matters. Be off to your grograne and cambric! I’m not your apprentice.”
“My master’s shop is shut with the rest. Aubrey, I saw you last night—though till now I tried to persuade myself it was not you—in Holborn, leaving the door of the Green Dragon. What do you there?”
The answer came blazing with wrath.
“You saw—you mean, sneaking, blackguardly traitor of a Dutch shopkeeper! I’ll have no rascal spies dogging my steps, and—”
“Aubrey,” said the quiet voice that made reply, “you know me better than that. I never played the spy on you yet, and I trust you will never give me cause. Yet what am I to think when as I pass along the street I behold you standing at the door of a Pa—”
“Hold your tongue!”
The closing word was cut sharply in two by that fierce response. It might be a pavior, a pear-monger, or a Papist. Hans was silent until Aubrey had again spoken, which he did in a hard, constrained tone.