Neither Silvette nor Diana had yet appeared, nor had he been instructed what to say to those who might call in answer to the advertisement. He looked up doubtfully as the maid announced a Mr. Rivett and a Colonel Curmew, and he stepped forward as these two gentlemen were ushered in.
"How d'you do?" he said pleasantly. "My cousins will be in directly. I am James Edgerton 3d."
Colonel Curmew, a jaunty gentleman of less than middle height and age, looked at him out of a pair of eyes slightly inclined to pop. He appeared to be rather a good-looking man at first glance, with a perceptible military cut which, however, seemed to threaten something akin to a strut. He didn't exactly strut when he stepped, but he held himself very erect—the more so perhaps because he seemed to lack something else—perhaps height.
He knew Edgerton perfectly well by sight and reputation; and when he sat down he was still looking at him out of his full, pale eyes.
Mr. Rivett also seated himself—a little man with a walrus mustache who somehow looked as though, under his loosely cut clothes, his slight physique was steel framed.
He put on his glasses and looked at Edgerton out of two little unwinking eyes which reminded the young fellow of holes burned in a blanket.
"I came," he said cautiously, "in answer to a somewhat unusual advertisement."
"Yes," said Edgerton pleasantly, "we advertised."
"If I recollect," continued Mr. Rivett, "you did not figure in the advertisement."
"No," replied Edgerton, smiling; "my cousins possess the family talents; I'm supernumerary—merely thrown in. My services are not worth very much; I ride and shoot, of course, and all that, but I don't talk very well and my dancing is the limit."