"I tell you no," returned Mr. Edwin Barley, with a grim smile. "He is just as much Sir Harry Chandos as I am: it is not he who comes into the title. Let it pass, however."
"Did you want him, sir?" inquired Hickens, quitting at once the controversy like a well-trained servant.
"I do. But I would very much have preferred to see Lady Chandos first."
"That is quite out of the question, sir," concluded Hickens, as he conducted his visitor to the state drawing-room. Oh, but it was a relief to me—shivering just inside the oak-parlour—to hear him pass it!
As will readily be understood, I have to relate things now that did not at the time come under my personal sight or hearing: they only reached me later. Mr. Edwin Barley looked upon his prisoner as his; as much his own, with those two keen policemen posted outside the house and he inside it, as though George Heneage had lain at his feet manacled and fettered. He could not resist the temptation of entering the house that contained his long-evading enemy.
Hickens took out his revenge. Returning with his master to the large drawing-room, he contrived to let it be known that he maintained his own opinion; giving the introduction with great emphasis—
"Mr. Edwin Barley, Sir Harry."
CHAPTER XXIX.
MR. EDWIN BARLEY IN THE WEST WING.
Mr. Edwin Barley, standing with his back to the door, his thumbs in the button-holes of his waistcoat, as a man at complete ease, wheeled round at the words. Sir Harry Chandos waited for him to speak, never inviting him to sit.
"Good morning, Mr. Chandos."