“Oh, a little, piddling sort of minnikin. Wearing a couple of pairs of glasses, most likely, and sure to be smoking an offensive cigar. Speaks with a lisp when he gets excited—sometimes when he isn’t. You couldn’t have seen him?”
“No,” I avouched. “Neither to-day nor any other day.” I had already resolved, by the by, to tell no stranger about the men I had seen. I wanted to be believed.
I refrained from asking why Sir Brooke’s presence was so necessary for the comfort of all, but my new acquaintance evidently saw the question in my face, for he answered it in a manner to provoke my curiosity yet further. “He’s going to propose the health of the bride, y’know.”
A third personage came round from the other side of the stairs, and the blood in my veins gave a little leap when I recognized the white-haired man whose suspicious behaviour I had overlooked in the dim room with the tower windows. His gaze was inquiring, as if he had come to see whose the voices were, and when he saw my unaccustomed face, he gave a cluck, as if to say, “I know who you are,” and demanded peremptorily:
“Are you the missing idiot?”
I said, “Perhaps.”
His little dark eyes sparkled. “Then you’re not—no, I see you’re not. You haven’t, by the way, seen a lost sheep of a knight outside?”
“No.”
Somehow Belvoir had melted away upon the coming of this gentleman; now the old fellow, with his eyes pursuing the other down the hall out of my view, snapped, “So much the better. We have at least one crazy man here already.”
“Indeed! What is his name?” I asked with much enjoyment, expecting to hear Belvoir identified, for I judged that no love was lost between these two.