'M. WYLDER.
200_l._)
'23rd Feb., &c. &c.'
When Jos. Larkin presented this little order, it was in the handsome square room in which Captain Lake transacted business—a lofty apartment, wainscoted in carved oak, and with a great stone mantelpiece, with the Wylder arms, projecting in bold relief, in the centre, and a florid scroll, with 'RESURGAM' standing forth as sharp as the day it was chiselled nearly three hundred years before.
There was some other business—Brandon business—to be talked over first; and that exhausted, Mr. Larkin sat as usual, with one long thigh crossed upon the other—his arm thrown over the back of his chair, and his tall, bald head a little back, and his small mild eyes twinkling through their pink lids on the enigmatical captain, who had entered upon the march of ambition in a spirit so audacious and conquering.
'I had a line from Mr. Mark Wylder yesterday afternoon, as usual without any address but the postmark;' and good Mr. Larkin laughed a mild, little patient laugh, and lifted his open hand, and shook his head. 'It really is growing too absurd—a mere order upon you to hand me 200_l._ How I'm to dispose of it, I have not the faintest notion.'
And he laughed again; at the same time he gracefully poked the little note, between two fingers, to Captain Lake, who glanced full on him, for a second, as he took it.
'And how is Mark?' enquired Lake, with his odd, sly smile, as he scrawled a little endorsement on the order. 'Does he say anything?'
'No; absolutely nothing—he's a very strange client!' said Larkin, laughing again. 'There can be no objection, of course, to your reading it; and he thinks—he thinks—he'll be here soon again—oh, here it is.'
Mr. Larkin had been fumbling, first in his deep waistcoat, and then in his breast-pocket, as if for the letter, which was locked fast into the iron safe, with Chubb's patent lock, in his office at the Lodge. But it would not have done to have kept a secret from Captain Lake, of Brandon; and therefore his not seeing the note was a mere accident.