"See here," he said, with cold emphasis. "I guess what you're driving at, and I tell you I don't like it. You say you are Nellie Vincent's cousin, and that you remember me in the old days. Well, you may; but I don't remember you, and I don't recognise your right to criticise me."
"I MET HER AT A CRUSH IN HANS PLACE."
"Really," I began, "I have no wish——"
"Good heavens, man!" he interrupted, and pointed excitedly to the panorama around us. "Look about you, and say if you know a better place for a poor devil of a Pariah to bury himself in! My hut is comfortable; the scenery is perfect; that caldeirada of mullet and vegetables, of which you were pleased to approve just now, is a luxury within reach of even a railwayman's wage, and the cigar you are smoking is one of a case of eight thousand Villar y Villars which I brought with me when I turned hermit. I don't smoke more than one a day on an average, so if you calculate you'll find there are still over four thousand left."
He got up, and paced the gravel aggressively.
"Do you ever see an English paper?" I asked, with sudden recollections of an obituary notice.
The furrow on the ticket-nipper's brow smoothed itself out; his movements lost their irritable jerkiness, and when he spoke the grating snarl had gone from his voice.
"Yes," he answered, quietly, "I do. I know that my father is dead, and that I can call myself Sir Ian Farquhar if I choose to. That's what you mean, isn't it? I got a month's holiday and went and laid a wreath on the old man's grave."