Concerns Claudia’s Caprice.
The division had been taken, the position of the Government saved, and the House was “up.”
Dudley Chisholm, after driving back in a hansom to his chambers in St. James’s Street, stretched himself before the fire with a weary sigh of relief, to rest himself after the struggle in which he had been so prominent a figure. His rooms, almost opposite the Naval and Military Club, were decorated in that modern style affected by the younger generation of bachelors, with rich brocade hangings, Turkey carpets, art pottery, and woodwork painted dead white. A single glance, however, showed it to be the abode of a man sufficiently wealthy to be able to indulge in costly works of art and fine old china; and although modern in every sense of the word, it was, nevertheless, a very snug, tasteful and well-arranged abode.
The room in which he was sitting, deep in a big armchair of the “grandfather” type, was a study; not spacious, but lined completely with well-chosen books, while the centre was occupied by a large, workmanlike table littered by the many official documents which his secretary had, on the previous morning, brought to him from the Foreign Office. The electric lamp on the table was shaded by a cover of pale green silk and lace, so that he sat in the shadow, with the firelight playing upon his dark and serious features.
Parsons, his bent, white-haired old servant in livery of an antiquated cut, had noiselessly entered with his master’s whiskey and soda, and after placing it in its accustomed spot on a small table at his elbow, was about to retire, when the younger man, deep in reflection, stirred himself, asking:
“Who brought that letter—the one I found here when I came in?”
“A commissionaire, sir,” was the old servitor’s response. “It came about midnight. And somebody rang up on the telephone about an hour after, but I couldn’t catch the name, as I’m always a bit flustered by the outlandish thing, sir.”
His master smiled. That telephone was, he knew, the bane of old Parsons’ existence.
“Ah!” he said. “You’re not so young as you used to be, eh?”
“No, Master Dudley,” sighed the old fellow with the blanched hair and thin, white, mutton-chop whiskers. “When I think that I was his lordship’s valet here in London nigh on fifty years ago, and that I’ve been in the family every since, I begin to feel that I’m gettin’ on a bit in years.”