He was a man of middle height, powerfully built, but inclining now, in his fifty-seventh year, to portliness. He was of a dark complexion, not unhandsome, the strength of his mouth tempered by the gentleness of his short-sighted eyes. His great head, covered by a heavy black periwig, reared itself upon too short a neck from his massive shoulders.
As Holles entered, he looked up, threw down his pen, and rose, but slowly, as if weighted by hesitation or surprise. Surprise was certainly the expression on his face as he stood there observing the other’s swift, eager advance. No word was uttered until no more than the table stood between them, and then it was to the usher that Albemarle addressed himself, shortly, in dismissal.
He followed the man’s withdrawal with his eyes, nor shifted them again to his visitor until the door had closed. Then abruptly concern came to blend with the surprise still abiding in his face, and he held out a hand to the Colonel whom this reception had a little bewildered. Holles bethought him that circumspection had ever been George Monk’s dominant characteristic.
“God save us, Randal! Is it really you?”
“Have ten years wrought such changes that you need to ask?”
“Ten years!” said the Duke slowly, a man bemused. “Ten years!” he said again, and his gentle almost sorrowing eyes scanned his visitor from foot to crown. His grip of the Colonel’s hand tightened a moment. Then abruptly, as if at a loss, or perhaps to dissemble the extent to which he was affected by this meeting, “But sit, man, sit,” he urged, waving him to the armchair set at the table so as to face the Duke’s own.
Holles sat down, hitching his sword-hilt forward, and placing his hat upon the floor. The Duke resumed his seat with the same slowness with which he had lately risen from it, his eyes the while upon his visitor.
“How like your father you are grown!” he said at last.
“That will be something gained, where all else is but a tale of loss.”
“Aye! You bear it writ plain upon you,” the Duke sadly agreed, and again there broke from him that plaintive, “God save us!”