The address given was 28, Great Carrington Street, West, at the door of which house Lionel’s cab deposited him as the clock was striking eleven next morning.
Kester St. George’s chambers were luxuriously fitted up. They seemed an appropriate home for a man of wealth and fashion. Kester, attired in a flowery dressing-robe, with a smoking-cap on his head, was lounging in slippered ease before a well-furnished breakfast table. While there was no one to see him, he looked careworn and gloomy. He held an open letter in one hand, the reading of which seemed to have been anything but a source of satisfaction to him.
“Won’t wait more than another week, won’t he!” he muttered. “Not to be put off with any more of my fine promises, eh? If I were cleared out to-morrow, I couldn’t raise more than a bare two fifty—just an eighth of the two thousand Grimble says he must have out of me before seven days are over: and he means it this time. If I could only raise five hundred, that might satisfy him till I get a turn of luck. I wonder—as I’ve often wondered—whether Dering knows of that little secret down at Park Newton. How fortunate that he’s coming here this morning! I’ll pump him. If he knows nothing of it—why then, we shall see what we shall see. What with the diamonds and one thing or another, it ought to be good for five or six hundred at the very least. That must be Dering’s knock.”
“Dear boy! so pleased to see you! so glad to find you have not forgotten me!” were Kester’s first words, accompanied by a hearty shake of the hand. All traces of gloom, and depression had vanished from his face. He looked as if he had not a care in the world.
“I am not likely to forget you, Kester,” said Lionel. “I should have hunted you up weeks back, but I heard that you were in Paris.”
“So I was in Paris—only got here three days ago. What will you take, tea or coffee? I’ve something fresh here in potted meats that I can strongly recommend.”
Kester St. George at this time was thirty-three years old. He was a tall, well-built man, with something almost military in his bearing and carriage. He had bold, well-cut, aquiline features, a clear, pale olive complexion, and black, restless eyes. Black, too, jet black, were his thick eyebrows and his heavy, drooping moustache: but already his hair had faded to an iron-gray. He had one of those rare voices—low, soft, and persuasive, but perfectly clear, which are far more dangerous to a woman’s peace of mind than mere good looks can ever hope to be. It was a voice whose charm few men could resist. Yet it was so uniformly dulcet, it was pitched so perpetually in a minor key that some people came at last to think that through all its sweetness, through all that pleasant flow or words which Kester St. George could command at will, they could detect a tone of insincerity—the ring, as it were, of counterfeit metal trying to pass itself off as good, honest gold. But, then, some people are very fanciful—ridiculously so: and the majority of those who knew Kester St. George were satisfied to vote him a capital talker, and very pleasant company, and neither wished nor cared to know anything more.
“It must be eight or nine years, Li, since you and I met last,” said Kester, as he helped his cousin to some coffee.
“Yes, about that time,” said Lionel.
“You are so altered that I should hardly have known you again.”