"Do you mind coming to my laboratory?" he asked, after shaking hands with his unexpected visitor. "I can see that you have something of importance to say to me, and we shall be safer from interruption there."
"I shouldn't have come to this fag-end of Christendom if I hadn't wanted very much to see you, you may depend upon it, Carrington," answered Reginald, sulkily. "What on earth makes you live in such an out-of-the-way hole?"
"I am a student, and an out-of-the-way hole—as you are good enough to call it—suits my habits. Besides, this house is cheap, and the rent suits my pocket."
"It looks like a doll's house," said Reginald, contemptuously.
"My mother likes to surround herself with birds and flowers," answered the surgeon; "and I like to indulge any fancy of my mother's."
Victor Carrington's countenance seemed to undergo a kind of transformation as he spoke of his mother. The bright glitter of his eyes softened; the hard lines of his iron mouth relaxed.
The one tender sentiment of a dark and dangerous nature was this man's affection for his widowed mother.
He opened the door of an apartment at the back of the house, and entered, followed by Mr. Eversleigh.
Reginald stared in wonder at the chamber in which he found himself. The room had once been a kitchen, and was much larger than any other room in the cottage. Here there was no attempt at either comfort or elegance. The bare, white-washed walls had no adornment but a deal shelf here and there, loaded with strange-looking phials and gallipots. Here all the elaborate paraphernalia of a chemist's laboratory was visible. Here Reginald Eversleigh beheld stoves, retorts, alembics, distilling apparatus; all the strange machinery of that science which always seems dark and mysterious to the ignorant.
The visitor looked about him in utter bewilderment.