This was said in a firm tone that-was meant to indicate to the Earl that half an hour was the limit Peregrine had fixed to the interview, but as Worth was already strolling away towards some iron steps leading up to a back door into the house it was doubtful whether he had heard the speech. Peregrine went up the stairs behind him wishing that he were ten years older, and able to assume a manner ten times more assured than the Earl’s own.
The door opened into a passage that ran from the hall to the back of the house. It was not locked, and the Earl led Peregrine through it to his book-room, a square apartment with windows on to St. James’s Street. The room was furnished in a somewhat sombre style, and the net blinds that hung across the window while preventing the curious from looking in also obscured a good deal of light.
The Earl tossed his glove on to the table and turned to see Peregrine glancing about him rather disparagingly. He smiled, and said: “Yes, you are really better off on the Marine Parade, are you not?”
Peregrine looked quickly across at him. “Then this was the house my sister wanted!”
“Why, of course! Had you not guessed as much?”
“Well, I did not think a great deal about it,” confessed Peregrine. “It was Judith who was so set on—” He stopped, and laughed ruefully. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know which of the two she did want!” he said.
“She very naturally wanted the one I told her she was not to have,” replied the Earl, moving over to a console-table where a decanter of wine and two glasses had been placed. “Fortunately I was able to read her intention just in time to retrieve my own mistake in ever mentioning this house.”
“Ay, and devilish cross you made her,” said Peregrine.
“There is nothing very new in that,” said the Earl in his driest voice.
“Oh, she had not been disliking you for a long time then, you know,” said Peregrine, inspecting a round table snuff-box with a loose lid that stood on the Earl’s desk. “In fact, quite the reverse.”