their comments, the rest of the company will be
struck with a perfect silence, unable to join in the subject discussed,
and half ashamed to introduce any ordinary matter into such high and
distinguished society. And thus Lord Culduff and Temple went on for full
an hour or more, pelting each other with little court scandals and small
state intrigues, till Colonel Bramleigh fell asleep, and Cutbill, having
finished his Madeira, would probably have followed his host's example,
when a servant announced tea, adding, in a whisper, that Mr. L'Estrange
and his sister were in the drawing-room.

CHAPTER IX. OVER THE FIRE.

In a large room, comfortably furnished, but in which there was a
certain blending of the articles of the drawing-room with those of the
dining-room, showing unmistakably the bachelor character of the owner,
sat two young men at opposite sides of an ample fireplace. One sat, or
rather reclined, on a small leather sofa, his bandaged leg resting on a
pillow, and his pale and somewhat shrunken face evidencing the
results of pain and confinement to the house. His close-cropt head and
square-cut beard, and a certain mingled drollery and fierceness in the
eyes, proclaimed him French, and so M. Anatole Pracontal was; though it
would have been difficult to declare as much from his English, which he
spoke with singular purity and the very faintest peculiarity of accent.

Opposite him sat a tall well-built man of about thirty-four or five,
with regular and almost handsome features, marred, indeed, in expression
by the extreme closeness of the eyes, and a somewhat long upper lip,
which latter defect an incipient moustache was already concealing. The
color of his hair was, however, that shade of auburn which verges on
red, and is so commonly accompanied by a much freckled skin. This same
hair, and hands and feet almost enormous in size, were the afflictions
which imparted bitterness to a lot which many regarded as very enviable
in life; for Mr. Philip Longworth was his own master, free to go where
he pleased, and the owner of a very sufficient fortune. He had been
brought up at Oscot, and imbibed, with a very fair share of knowledge, a
large stock of that general mistrust and suspicion which is the fortune
of those entrusted to priestly teaching, and which, though he had
travelled largely and mixed freely with the world, still continued
to cling to his manner, which might be characterized by the one
word--furtive.