"No, not in the city. He is secretary to a gentleman at the west end."
Peter Byrne, after sniffing once or twice at the flowers, toddled back to his easy-chair by the fire, and spreading his handkerchief over his knees, waited patiently for his tea. This Miriam now took to him; placing it on a little low table in front of him.
"Good girl, good girl," he said. Then, turning suddenly on Van Duren, he added, "When I was a young spark, I always liked to have a flower in my button-hole. The girls used to beg them of me--bless their pretty eyes! I daresay the young hussies nowadays do the very same thing."
Max Van Duren, at this time, was fifty years old. He was not very tall, but broad-set and strongly built. His coarse, short-cut, sandy hair showed as yet few traces of age. His face was closely shaven, so that whatever character there was in it could be clearly seen without the disguise of beard or moustache. A massive jaw; a close-shut mouth, with its straight line of thin lips; heavy, overhanging eyebrows, and small, deep-set eyes of a cold, steel gray: such were the prominent features of a face that was full of power, self-will, and obstinacy. His ears were pierced, but the small gold rings he had worn in them when a young man had been discarded years ago. Professional beggars are generally pretty good students of facial character, and no member of that fraternity had ever been known to solicit alms from Max Van Duren.
He had not been used to female society, and he felt himself altogether out of his element as he sat at the tea-table and was waited upon by Miriam.
Miss Byrne had not had her magnificent eyes given her for nothing. Very early in life she had learned how to make use of them. After that one full, unveiled look into Van Duren's eyes when she invited him to take tea with her, she kept her own eyes carefully under subjection. He could not keep his away from her, a fact of which Miriam was perfectly conscious; but now that she had got him there, seated opposite to her, she seemed to have become all at once shy, timid, and all but speechless. Now and then he caught a momentary, half-startled glance aimed at him from under the shadow of her long lashes, but that was all. She seemed to turn her eyes anywhere, rather than look him full in the face. He was quite at a loss what to say. What bond of sympathies, tastes, or ideas, as he asked himself, could there be in common between a man like him and that charming creature opposite? There were a great many subjects that he knew a great deal about, but he could not call to mind one that would be likely to have the faintest possible interest for Miss Byrne. Still, it was requisite that he should say something, or she would think him no better than a mummy.
He looked round the room: there were a number of books scattered about. "Are you fond of reading, Miss Byrne?" he asked, suddenly: as good an opening, under the circumstances, as he could possibly have found.
"Yes, very--when I can get the sort of book I like."
"May I ask what sort of book it is that you do like?"
"Oh, novels of course: a sort of literature for which, I daresay, you care nothing."