“No doubt.” Cosgrove swung about in his chair with a ruddy scowl. “And I’ll trouble his Lordship to explain how a piece of my private correspondence arrived in his pocket, and will he please tell me what use he thought to make of it?”
Our minds play us pranks. The quarrel itself should have engrossed me, but an absurd irrelevant detail about Cosgrove seized my attention. This was the first time that I had seen the back of his head. His black hair, I have stated, was short cut, and at the rear the recent clipping had left a broad streak of white between his splay ears, so that a person seeing him from behind for the first time, far from supposing him the wealthiest bachelor in Ireland, might take him for a yokel just come from his potato patch, rawly scissored for the fair, to complete with other yokels for the favour of rustic beauties.
Then my glance shifted to Lord Ludlow, who also had swung about in his chair, stiff and upright, his small bright green eyes sparkling, his face full of indignation, like an affronted gerfalcon’s.
“What do you mean, sir? I have no interest in your correspondence, I am sure.”
“Leave your pretences, shame on you, sir!” said Cosgrove (to whom I had in impotence surrendered the slip). “This is a private communication. I repeat, what presumption—”
“You’re mad,” scoffed Lord Ludlow. “I know nothing about your communications. I don’t carry them about—”
Quite half-wittedly I interjected a hasty, “But my dear Ludlow, I saw it fall when your handkerchief—”
This was mere idiocy, diverting the wrath of the god to my own shoulders. The thin man turned spryly upon me. “If you will kindly confine yourself to your own business, Mr. Bannerlee, without excursions into the fantastic.”
“Mr. Bannerlee is right, I have no doubt,” asserted Sean Cosgrove with ponderous emphasis; “and he is prying into no one’s business when he tells the lawful truth.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee!” cackled Ludlow.