"What is your name?"
"Fitzgerald."
"I aver that you are he," said Hugo, after a brief glance of scrutiny, "though I should hardly have known you. I am glad you are come. I was wishing particularly to see you."
Fitzgerald looked surprised. He had fancied that he would be an unwelcome, perhaps a dreaded apparition, yet here was the man who he had thought would be disturbed at his appearance actually expressing his pleasure at meeting him.
"Then I am glad I came," he said. "I thought perhaps you would be sorry to see me."
"So I should have been a week since. Now something has occurred which makes a meeting between us desirable."
"Is your uncle dead?" asked the visitor, with eager interest.
"No, he is still living," returned Hugo, with a half unconscious sigh of regret. "Walk with me to yonder summer-house. I must have some serious conversation with you."
Fitzgerald followed, wondering considerably what Hugo had to say to him, and the two sat down in a summer-house or rustic arbor at some distance from the house, where there were not likely to be any listeners to their speech.