“Oh, you mustn't go as far as that—even in the absence of witnesses,” replied Lord Plowden, lightly. “I'll take off my coat for a few minutes,” he went on, very much at his ease. “It's hot in here. It's by the merest chance I happened to be detained in the City—and I saw your lights, and this afternoon we had no opportunity whatever for a quiet talk. No—I won't drink anything before dinner, but I'll light a cigar. I want to say to you, Thorpe,” he concluded, as he seated himself “that I think what you've done is very wonderful. The Marquis thinks so too—but I shouldn't like to swear that he understands much about it.”
The implication that the speaker did understand remained in the air like a tangible object. Thorpe took a chair, and the two men exchanged a silent, intent look. Their faces, dusky red on the side of the glow from the fire, pallid where the electric light fell slantwise upon them from above, had for a moment a mysterious something in common. Then the tension of the glance was relaxed—and on the instant no two men in London looked less alike.
Lord Plowden was familiarly spoken of as a handsome man. Thorpe had even heard him called the handsomest man in England—though this seemed in all likelihood an exaggeration. But handsome he undoubtedly was—tall without suggesting the thought of height to the observer, erect yet graceful, powerfully built, while preserving the effect of slenderness. His face in repose had the outline of the more youthful guardsman-type—regular, finely-cut, impassive to hardness. When he talked, or followed with interest the talk of others, it revealed almost an excess of animation. Then one noted the flashing subtlety of his glance, the swift facility of his smile and comprehending brows, and saw that it was not the guardsman face at all. His skin was fresh-hued, and there was a shade of warm brown in his small, well-ordered moustasche, but his hair, wavy and worn longer than the fashion, seemed black. There were perceptible veins of grey in it, though he had only entered his thirty-fifth year. He was dressed habitually with the utmost possible care.
The contrast between this personage and the older man confronting him was abrupt. Thorpe was also tall, but of a burly and slouching figure. His face, shrouded in a high-growing, dust-coloured beard, invited no attention. One seemed always to have known this face—thick-featured, immobile, undistinguished. Its accessories for the time being were even more than ordinarily unimpressive. Both hair and beard were ragged with neglect. His commonplace, dark clothes looked as if he had slept in them. The hands resting on his big knees were coarse in shape, and roughened, and ill-kept.
“I couldn't have asked anything better than your dropping in,” he repeated now, speaking with a drag, as of caution, on his words. “Witnesses or no witnesses, I'm anxious to have you understand that I realize what I owe to you.”
“I only wish it were a great deal more than it is,” replied the other, with a frank smile.
“Oh, it'll mount up to considerable, as it stands,” said Thorpe.
He could hear that there was a kind of reservation in his voice; the suspicion that his companion detected it embarrassed him. He found himself in the position of fencing with a man to whom all his feelings impelled him to be perfectly open. He paused, and was awkwardly conscious of constraint in the silence which ensued. “You are very kind to put it in that way,” said Lord Plowden, at last. He seemed also to be finding words for his thoughts with a certain difficulty. He turned his cigar round in his white fingers meditatively. “I gather that your success has been complete—as complete as you yourself could have desired. I congratulate you with all my heart.”
“No—don't say my success—say our success,” put in Thorpe.
“But, my dear man,” the other corrected him, “my interest, compared with yours, is hardly more than nominal. I'm a Director, of course, and I'm not displeased that my few shares should be worth something instead of nothing, but——”