"With reference to that little matter----"
I interrupted him.
"Mr. Haines, if you are finished with this person might I ask you to relieve me of his society?"
Jack Haines chose to fly into a rage.
"What the devil, sir, do you mean by wanting to speak in private to a lady who's a friend of mine! Outside!"
Mr. Trevannion went outside, Mr. Haines accompanying him to the door to see him go.
The very next day the Corsican brother obliged me with a call--my friend, the gentleman. He came accompanied by a friend--none other than that Lord Archibald Beaupré, of whom he had spoken.
My lord was long and thin and a little weedy. His hair was sandy, and parted, with mathematical exactness, precisely in the middle. It would not be many years before he went bald. His eyes were light blue--the kind of eyes which not only suggest a bad temper, but a senseless temper too. It is excusable--though foolish--to fly into a fury about something. But people with those sort of eyes are apt, when they feel that way disposed, to get into a rage about nothing at all, and to go blind with passion when they are at it. Milord's manner was very well. Only he struck me as being the least bit condescending--as if he was conscious of what a well-born man he was.
It was very kind of Mr. Townsend to bring him, and so I told him.
By the way, all the time I was looking at Mr. Townsend, I could not help my thoughts travelling to Mr. Stewart Trevannion. How alike they were, and yet how different. How came the two lives to be lived on such different roads? Sometime it might be worth my while to improve my acquaintance with Mr. Trevannion. One might acquire from them a scrap or two of gossip which might prove useful by and by. Could this man ever be like that man? I doubted it. This had what the other had not--the courage of Old Nick. He would never crouch, whatever else he did.