Mr. Monckton and the scene-painter came into the drawing-room at this moment, followed pretty closely by Launcelot Darrell.
“What have you done with your friend, Darrell?” Gilbert Monckton asked, with a look of surprise.
“Oh, he’s gone,” the young man answered, indifferently.
“You’ve let him go without asking him to rest, or take some refreshment?”
“Yes, I contrived to get rid of him.”
“We don’t usually ‘contrive to get rid’ of people when they come here on a wet winter night,” said Mr. Monckton. “You’ll give Tolldale Priory a reputation for inhospitality, I fear. Why did you not ask your friend to stop?”
“Because I didn’t care to introduce him to you,” Launcelot Darrell answered, coolly. “I never said he was a friend of mine. He’s only an acquaintance, and a very intrusive acquaintance. He had no right to ferret out my whereabouts, and to come down here after me. A man doesn’t want past associations forced upon him, however agreeable they may have been.”
“And still less when those associations are disagreeable. I understand. But who is this man?”
“He’s a Frenchman, a commis voyageur, or something of that kind; by no means a distinguished acquaintance. He’s a good fellow, in his own particular fashion, and would go out of his way to do me a service, I dare say; but he’s rather too fond of absinthe, or brandy, or any other spirit he can get hold of.”
“You mean that he is a drunkard,” said Mr. Monckton.