‘Good God! Hal, my dear old fellow!’ he exclaimed, ‘is this you?’
‘Who else?’ demanded Henry, with an attempt at jocularity, as he held out his hand and grasped that of Arthur.
The younger man looked him in the face for a few minutes without speaking. He could not trust himself to do so. He was too infinitely shocked. This Henry? Henry, whose devotion to his personal appearance had passed into a family proverb—who had always been the ‘nattiest’ youth, and the most perfectly-dressed young man, and the most faultless gentleman in the City—whose irreproachable garb and spotless linen and glossy hats had been cast in his teeth in bygone days, as witnesses that he was not fit for business or anything but a cavalier des dames. This limp, untidy, slovenly-looking man, with bloodshot eyes, and unhealthy complexion, his brother Henry, of whom he used to be so proud? Arthur felt a great lump rise in his throat, and could have sat down and cried to see the difference a few years had made in him. But he held his hand as in a vice instead, and replied in as hearty a voice as he could manage,—
‘Why, dear old chap, you’re not looking yourself at all. You took me quite by surprise, though Hannah did prepare Edie and me last night to see a change in you.’
‘Hannah, Hannah!’ cried his brother quickly; ‘what had she to say of me? What did she tell you? How dared she—I mean, why did she mention me at all?’
‘My dear Henry, it would have been very extraordinary, surely, if she had not mentioned you, considering that we went over to Hampstead to see you, and were much disappointed to find you had already retired to bed. You want shaking up, old fellow, that’s what it is. You’ve been worrying yourself over this big business too much. Your late partner’s death has thrown too much responsibility upon your shoulders. How I wish I were not such a fool, and could help you a little. But now that I have returned, you must come out more, Henry. It is quite time you came back to the world. It is—let me see!—quite nine months or more, surely, since that poor girl met with her death—’
‘Stop! stop!’ cried Henry suddenly. ‘What poor girl? What are you talking about?’
Arthur looked bewildered.
‘Why! Miss Crampton, or rather Mrs Walcheren, of course. It was her death, wasn’t it, that led to the other. You must have felt it terribly. Such a sudden shock, and when you regarded her as almost one of the family.’
‘Oh! no, I didn’t,’ replied Hindes, in an incoherent manner. ‘Why should I have felt it? She was nothing to me. I didn’t care about her. Why, to hear you talk in that extravagant way,’ he continued, turning his suspicious eyes upon his brother, ‘one would think—one would almost imagine that I had had something to do with it all.’