“I presume,” he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water, “I presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?”
While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most practical of us have a conscience at times.
“Yes.”
The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make sure that the door was closed.
“I knew your step-brother,” he explained, “Jem Agar, in India.”
Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and above the throbbing hatred.
“Ah! Will you sit down?”
The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met before and quarrelled—vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you will; but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between them (too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was trying in vain to ignore.
“I have brought home a few belongings of his,” the stranger went on to explain. “Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things.”
He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which he carried over his arm.