“An old army man,” I murmured to myself; “an officer’s servant, most likely.”
“You are becoming somewhat more fastidious, my friend,” I remarked, in reference to the valet.
“No, no, Wyndham,” was the reply; “Jacques is supposed to be my valet, but he is in reality a detective to help me in the work of penetrating the English mystery. Sometimes one good clue becomes lost while you are hunting up another, and Jacques’ duty will be to follow the scent before it grows cold, while I am doing something else; but, pray don’t tell anyone about him.”
What a delightful couple of hours we spent. As the clock struck eleven my friend rose to go. By that time he had given me a full history of his doings in Paris, and it would certainly have been difficult for a less enterprising individual to have managed to accomplish so much of actual work and positive enjoyment in so short a time.
“Then you never visited London at all during those two months?” I inquired.
“Not once,” was the reply; “I should have hated to visit my old haunts while you were away.”
With Pasquale back the old days returned, bringing with them the sunshine which seemed to crown him like a nimbus, and scatter its radiance all around.
As I stood by the old carved mantelpiece, winding up my watch after the door closed on him that evening, my heart was full of an exhilarating gaiety to which it had long been a stranger.
If I—a man by nature harsh and cold—regarded Pasquale with such tender feelings, what emotions must he arouse in the gentler sex, and what unutterable havoc must he work with their tender susceptibilities!
While this thought was exercising my brain, and as I turned into the inner room, I became conscious of a deep groan uttered on the opposite side of the blind doorway which stood between my bedroom and the room on the same floor in the adjoining house.