“I have only just got back from Paris,” he said. “I am glad to have met you, because I want you to fix a date for your promised visit to Park Newton.”
Kester was not alone. His arm was linked in that of another man. “Before fixing anything,” he said, “I must introduce to you my particular friend, Mr. Percy Osmond.—Osmond, my cousin, Li Dering, of whom you have frequently heard me speak.”
The two men bowed.
“Is it possible,” asked Lionel, “that you are a brother of the Mr. Kenneth Osmond whom I met when in America?”
“Kenneth Osmond and I are certainly brothers,” answered the other.
“Then I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. Your brother and I travelled together for six months through some of the wildest parts of North America. I never met with a man in my life whom I esteemed more or liked better.”
“Look here,” said Kester. “We can’t stand jawing in the street for ever. My club’s not three minutes away. Let us go there and wet the talk with a bottle of fiz.”
Mr. Percy Osmond was about eight-and-twenty years old. He was of medium height and slender build, and of a somewhat effeminate appearance. He had good features, and had rather fine black eyes, of which he was particularly proud. But there was a shiftiness about them, a restlessly suspicious look, as though the man at one time had been haunted by some terrible fear, and had never been able to forget it.
His face was closely shaven, except for a thin, silky, black moustache, which he wore with long waxed ends. He was foppishly dressed in the latest fashion, and displayed a profusion of jewellery. But there was something about him so arrogant and self-opinionated, something so coldly contemptuous of other men’s feelings and opinions whenever they chanced to clash with his own, that Lionel had not been ten minutes in his company before he said to himself that Mr. Percy Osmond was very different from Mr. Percy Osmond’s brother, and could never be included by him among the few men he numbered as his friends.
“So you want to pin me down to a date, do you?” said Kester as they sat down in the smoking-room at the club.