'Our long-lost friend' showed impatience then and there.
'What's he--what's he--gabbling about? ---- the man! Let them come!'
Hancock shrugged his shoulders; he dropped his voice.
'You hear?--Such language! But you mustn't mind.' He brought them forward. 'Here, my dear lord, are two ladies who have come to see you--Miss Desmond and Lady Violet Howarth.'
'Edith?' He hit upon her surname; he alone knew how. 'You're an old woman--aren't you?'
That was a civil thing to say,--particularly from a man in his position. I could have shaken him again. Edith only smiled.
'I'm not so young as I was. But you're not an old man, and I'm younger than you.'
'Old?--I am old. Rotten. Done. I feel a thousand. The years lie heavy--on me. I was--never--young.'
The thing was curiously true of Twickenham. He never had been young. Mentally, physically, and morally, he had been born old. As a boy he had all an old man's vices. As Edith perceived what a wreck the creature seemed I saw that tears were in her eyes.
'I am sorry to meet you, after all these years, like this. Poor Leonard!'