"Hush, sir," the man with the handkerchief cried, and this time almost angrily. "There is a mistake here, and in a moment you will say too much, if you have not said it already. This gentleman--if he is a gentleman--brings a letter from R. F., and is no more of a lord, I'll be sworn, than I am!"
"From R. F.?"
"Yes; and therefore if he is the person you think him---- But come, sir," he continued, eyeing me angrily, "what is your name? End this."
I did not wish to tell him, yet liked less to refuse. So I lied, and on the spur of the moment said, "Charles Taylor," that being the name of a man who lived below me.
The taller man struck one hand into the other. "There! Charles!" he cried, and looked at me smiling. "I have an eye for faces, and if you are not----"
"Nay, sir, I pray, be quiet," the man with the white handkerchief remonstrated. "Or if you are so certain----" and then he looked hard at me and frowned as if he began to feel a doubt. "Step this way and tell me what you think. This gentleman will doubtless excuse us, and wait a moment, whether he be whom you think him or not."
I was as uneasy and as unwilling to stay as could be; but the man's tone was resolute, and I saw that he was not a man to cross; so with an ill grace I consented, and the two drawing aside together into the deeper shadow under the Piazza, began to confer. This left me to kick my heels impatiently, and watch out of the corner of my eye the loiterers under the other Piazza, to learn if any observed us. Fortunately they were taken up with a quarrel which had just broken out between two hackney coachmen, and though a man came near me, bringing a woman, he had no eyes for me, and, calling a sedan-chair, went away again almost immediately.
I was so engrossed with watching on that side and taking everyone who looked towards me for an informer, that it was with a kind of shock that I found my two friends had grown in the course of their conference to three; nor had I more than discovered this before the new comer left the other two and sauntered up to me. "Oh, ah," he said carelessly, "and who do you say that you----" and there he stopped, staring in my face. And then, "By heavens, it is!" he cried.
By this time I was something astonished, and more amazed; and answered with spirit--though he was a hard-bitten man, with the look of a soldier or gamester, to whom ordinarily I should have given the wall--that I was merely a messenger, and knew nothing of the matter on which I was there, nor for whom they took me.
His face, which for a second or more had blazed with excitement, fell suddenly; and when I had done speaking, he laughed.