At the door of Mr. Stubbs’s office three excited clients were clamoring for entrance; an elderly clerk with a high bridge to his nose was withstanding them. Before the Mechanics’ Institute the secretary, a superior person of Manchester views, was talking pompously to a little group. “We must take in the whole field,” Toft heard him say. “If you’ll read Mr. Carlyle’s tract on——” Toft lost the rest. The Institute readers belonged mainly to Hatton’s Works or Banfield’s, and the secretary taught in an evening school. He was darkly suspected of being a teetotaller, but it had never been proved against him.
Toft began to wonder if he had chosen his time well, but he was near The Butterflies and he hardened his heart; to retreat now were to dub himself coward. He told the maid that he came from the Gatehouse, and that he was directed to deliver a letter into his lordship’s own hand, and in a moment he found himself mounting the shallow carpeted stairs. In comparison with the Gatehouse, the house was modern, elegant, luxurious, the passages were warm.
When he was ushered in, his lordship, a dressing-gown cast over a chair beside him as if he had just put on his coat, was writing near the fireplace. After an interval that seemed long to Toft, who eyed his heavy massiveness with a certain dismay, he laid down his pen, sat back, and looked at the servant.
“From the Gatehouse?” he asked, after a leisurely survey.
“Yes, my lord,” Toft answered respectfully. “I was with Mr. Audley when he was taken ill in the Yew Walk.”
“To be sure! I thought I knew your face. You’ve a letter for me?”
Toft hesitated. “I wished to see you, my lord,” he said. The thing was not as easy as he had hoped it would be; the man was more formidable. “On a matter of business.”
Audley raised his eyebrows. “Business?” he said. “Isn’t it Mr. Stubbs you want to see?”
“No, my lord,” Toft answered. But the sweat broke out on his forehead. What if his lordship took a high tone, ordered him out, and reported the matter to his master? Too late it struck Toft that a gentleman might take that line.
“Well, be quick,” Audley replied. Then in a different tone, “You don’t come from Miss Audley?”