Here, in the very heart of London was Fairladies once again and who could tell? . . . Might not the spring in the wall be touched, a bookcase step aside and a lady, "her neck and bosom of a startling whiteness," appear? For shame! He had now his own lady. The time had gone by for dreams. He came to reality with a start, finding himself in a long dusky library so thickly embedded with old books that the air was scented with the crushed aroma of old leather bindings. A long oak table confronted him and behind the table, busily engaged with writing, was his new master.
The old man muttered something and was gone. Sir Charles did not look up and Henry, his heart beating fast, was able to study his surroundings. The library was all that the most romantic soul could have wished it. The ceiling was high and stamped with a gold pattern. A gallery about seven feet from the ground ran round the room, and a little stairway climbed up to this; except for their high diamond-paned windows on one side of the room the bookcases completely covered the walls; thousands upon thousands of old books glimmered behind their gold tooling, the gold running like a thin mist from wall to wall.
Above the wide stone fireplace there was a bust of a sharp-nosed gentleman in whig and stock, very supercilious and a little dusty.
With all this Henry also took surreptitious peeps at Sir Charles, and what he saw did not greatly reassure him. He was a very thin man, dressed in deep black and a high white collar that would in other days have been called Gladstonian, bald, tight-lipped and with the same peaked bird-like nose as the gentleman above the fireplace. He gave an impression of perfect cleanness, neatness and order. Everything on the table, letter-weight, reference-books, paper knife, silver ink-bottle, pens and sealing-wax, was arranged so definitely that these things might have been stuck on to the table with glue. Sir Charles's hands were long, thin and bird-shaped like his nose. Henry, as he snatched glimpses of this awe-inspiring figure, was acutely conscious of his own deficiencies; he felt tumbled, rumpled, and crumpled. Whereas, only a quarter of an hour ago walking down Hill Street, he had felt debonair, smart and fashionable (far of course from what he really was), so unhappily impressionable was he.
Suddenly the hand was raised, the pen laid carefully down, the nose shot out across the table.
"You are Mr. Trenchard?" asked a voice that made Henry feel as though he were a stiff sheet of paper being slowly cut by a very sharp knife.
"Yes, sir," he said.
"Very well. . . . We have only corresponded hitherto. Mr. Mark is your cousin, I think?"
"My brother-in-law, sir."
"Quite. A very able fellow. He should go far."