"I came down here to see you, Geoffrey, because I need you.
"You know, John, that I am at your service, now and always."
"It is not my service, Geoffrey," said Dacre. "But later for this. Here comes old Featherstone; we have come down here together. Here, let us get on the sofa; it is the same one we used to sit on when we came here in the hunting season in your father's day."
"I did not have a chance to say anything to you while the ladies were present," said Featherstone, sitting down between his friends. "I am very glad to see you. I had heard nothing about you since you left Paris. They tell me that you are living in the neighborhood."
"Yes, just over there," indicated Geoffrey with his thumb. "You are to stop three days, I hear. You must both come to see me. You will be my first guests since I came back to my estate."
"You look as well as ever," said Featherstone. "But how we have made the running the wrong way, to be sure, since I last saw you."
Featherstone made a gesture with his left hand, and looked inquiringly at his friends; but Geoffrey, though he noticed the gesture, did not attach any significance to it.
He raised his glass of port over a carafe of water. "The King," he said.
All three drank, and Dacre whispered, "No more of this, Featherstone. I shall see Geoffrey this evening; he is not one of us yet."
"What an attractive woman Mrs. Oswald Carey is!" exclaimed Featherstone. "You knew her before, did you not, Geoffrey?"