"Lord!" said Theodore breathless, "It's you! What a lark! Your name's never mentioned—no how. What did you do?... Wish I could stop and see it! I'm ten minutes late. Ave atque vale. So long!"
He vanished with incredible velocity. And Mr. Trafford was alone in possession of the open doorway except for Toupee, who after a violent outbreak of hostility altered his mind and cringed to his feet in abject and affectionate propitiation. A pseudo-twin appeared, said "Hello!" and vanished, and then he had an instant's vision of Mr. Pope, newspaper in hand, appearing from the dining-room. His expression of surprise changed to malevolence, and he darted back into the room from which he had emerged. Trafford decided to take the advice of a small brass plate on his left hand, and "ring also."
A housemaid came out of the bowels of the earth very promptly and ushered him up two flights of stairs into what was manifestly Mr. Pope's study.
It was a narrow, rather dark room lit by two crimson-curtained windows, and with a gas fire before which Mr. Pope's walking boots were warming for the day. The apartment revealed to Trafford's cursory inspection many of the stigmata of an Englishman of active intelligence and literary tastes. There in the bookcase were the collected works of Scott, a good large illustrated Shakespeare in numerous volumes, and a complete set of bound Punches from the beginning. A pile of back numbers of the Times stood on a cane stool in a corner, and in a little bookcase handy for the occupier of the desk were Whitaker, Wisden and an old peerage. The desk bore traces of recent epistolary activity, and was littered with the printed matter of Aunt Plessington's movements. Two or three recent issues of The Financial Review of Reviews were also visible. About the room hung steel engravings apparently of defunct judges or at any rate of exceedingly grim individuals, and over the mantel were trophies of athletic prowess, a bat witnessing that Mr. Pope had once captained the second eleven at Harrogby.
Mr. Pope entered with a stern expression and a sentence prepared. "Well, sir," he said with a note of ironical affability, "to what may I ascribe this—intrusion?"
Mr. Trafford was about to reply when Mr. Pope interrupted. "Will you be seated," he said, and turned his desk chair about for himself, and occupying it, crossed his legs and pressed the finger tips of his two hands together. "Well, sir?" he said.
Trafford remained standing astraddle over the boots before the gas fire.
"Look here, sir," he said; "I am in love with your daughter. She's one and twenty, and I want to see her—and in fact——" He found it hard to express himself. He could think only of a phrase that sounded ridiculous. "I want—in fact—to pay my addresses to her."
"Well, sir, I don't want you to do so. That is too mild. I object strongly—very strongly. My daughter has been engaged to a very distinguished and able man, and I hope very shortly to hear that that engagement—— Practically it is still going on. I don't want you to intrude upon my daughter further."
"But look here, sir. There's a certain justice—I mean a certain reasonableness——"