It was followed immediately by a knock on the outside of our door. Obeying my companion’s look, I cried, ‘Enter!’
A slender man of middle height, booted and wrapped up, with his face almost entirely hidden by a fold of his cloak, came in quickly, and closing the door behind him, advanced towards the table. ‘Which is M. de Rosny?’ he said.
Rosny had carefully turned his face from the light, but at the sound of the other’s voice he sprang up with a cry of relief. He was about to speak, when the newcomer, raising his hand peremptorily, continued, ‘No names, I beg. Yours, I suppose, is known here. Mine is not, nor do I desire it should be. I want speech of you, that is all.’
‘I am greatly honoured,’ M. de Rosny replied, gazing at him eagerly. ‘Yet, who told you I was here?’
‘I saw you pass under a lamp in the street,’ the stranger answered. ‘I knew your horse first, and you afterwards, and bade a groom follow you. Believe me,’ he added, with a gesture of the hand, ‘you have nothing to fear from me.’
‘I accept the assurance in the spirit in which it is offered,’ my companion answered with a graceful bow, ‘and think myself fortunate in being recognised’—he paused a moment and then continued—‘by a Frenchman and a man of honour.’
The stranger shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your pardon, then,’ he said, ‘if I seem abrupt. My time is short. I want to do the best with it I can. Will you favour me?’
I was for withdrawing, but M. de Rosny ordered Maignan to place lights in the next room, and, apologising to me very graciously, retired thither with the stranger, leaving me relieved indeed by these peaceful appearances, but full of wonder and conjectures who this might be, and what the visit portended. At one moment I was inclined to identify the stranger with M. de Rosny’s brother; at another with the English ambassador; and then, again, a wild idea that he might be M. de Bruhl occurred to me. The two remained together about a quarter of an hour and then came out, the stranger leading the way, and saluting me politely as he passed through the room. At the door he turned to say, ‘At nine o’clock, then?’
‘At nine o’clock,’ M. de Rosny replied, holding the door open. ‘You will excuse me if I do not descend, Marquis?’
‘Yes, go back, my friend,’ the stranger answered. And, lighted by Maignan, whose face on such occasions could assume the most stolid air in the world, he disappeared down the stairs, and I heard him go out.