The dinner was good, the wine not execrable, the tobacco best of all; and in excellent spirits, quite restored to his belief in men and women, Fred started off alone for ‘St. George and the Dragon,’ under a suspicion of moonlight just enough to send a quiver of silver through the trees, and show the darkness of the road, but not enough to send reason distraught down sentimental byways and insistently urge the advantages of open air meditation. He reached his inn sane and safe, and bethought himself of unanswered letters. Suddenly he was disturbed in the glow of composition by the sound of swift steps on the stairs and the ring of violent, angry speech.
‘A stranger in my room, Mrs. Matcham! Tut, tut. This is what I cannot permit. Instantly order him to clear out.’
Luffington looked up inquiringly as the door opened with an aggressive bang, and a queer attractive-looking fellow stood eyeing him imperiously upon the threshold. He had imagined Mr. Malcolm Fitzroy a respectable English gentleman, florid, prosperous, eminently aristocratic. He was confronted with the reverse. Before him stood in a threatening attitude, and frowning hideously, a man almost too dark for English blood, too small and too vengefully passionate of feature and expression. His hair, which curled, was of a dusty black, as if it had lain in ashes. His lips were full and red, covered with the same dust-hued shadow, and teeth so white, nostrils so fine and sharp, brows so low and oddly beautiful, surely never belonged to the respectable English race. His eyes were long, of a liquid blackness, through which red and yellow flames leaped as in those of an untamed animal, and his hands were brown and small, like the hands of a slender girl.
‘Do you hear, sir? This is my room,’ he cried.
There was a foreign richness in his voice that matched the quaint exterior, and was equally in puzzling contrast with his pretensions as an Englishman.... Luffington was convinced he had to do with some adventurer over seas, and he curtly replied that for the present the room was his. Mrs. Matcham, scared and anxious, shot him a glance of prayer over the shoulder of her domineering customer.
But Mr. Malcolm Fitzroy was not to be silenced or turned out by the superior airs of a strolling jackanapes. He paced the room in his quick, light way, opened familiar drawers and presses, inquired after missing objects, and never stopped in a running murmur upon the impudence of travellers and the insolence of intruders.
‘May I point out that you are condemning yourself?’ Luffington dryly remarked, as he watched him in wonder. ‘Intrusion can never be other than insolent.’
‘Then why the devil are you sitting here, sir?’
‘For the simple reason that I slept here last night, and the room is mine as long as I stay at this inn.’
‘Mrs. Matcham, you had no business to let this chamber when there are others unoccupied in the house. You know I am liable to turn up at any moment, and that I cannot sleep in any room but this.’