ur) save for a solitary
individual who lounged upon one of the settles, staring into the fire.

He was a gentleman of middling height and very slenderly built, with a
pair of dreamy blue eyes set in the oval of a face whose pallor was
rendered more effective by a patch at the corner of his mouth. His coat,
of a fine blue satin laced with silver, sat upon him with scarce a
wrinkle (the which especially recommended itself to me); white satin
small-clothes and silk stockings of the same hue, with silver-buckled,
red-heeled shoes, completed a costume of an elegance seldom seen out of
London. I noticed also that his wig, carefully powdered and ironed, was
of the very latest French mode (vastly different to the rough scratch
wigs usually affected by the gentry hereabouts), while the
three-cornered hat upon the table at his elbow was edged with the very
finest point. Altogether, there was about him a certain delicate air
that reminded me of my own vanished youth, and I sighed. As I took my
seat, yet wondering who this fine gentleman might be, Jack seized me
suddenly by the arm.

"Look!" says he in my ear, "damme, there sits the fellow!"

Turning my head, I saw that the gentleman had risen, and he now tripped
towards us, his toes carefully pointed, while a small, gold-mounted
walking cane dangled from his wrist by a riband.

"I believe," says he, speaking in a soft, affected voice, "I believe I
have the felicity of addressing Sir John Chester?"

"The same, sir," said Jack, rising, "and, sir, I wish a word with you."
Here, however, remembering myself and Bentley, he introduced us--though
in a very perfunctory fashion, to be sure.

"Sir John," says Mr. Tawnish, "your very obedient humble;
gentlemen--yours," and he bowed deeply to each of us in turn, with a
prodigious flourish of the laced hat.

[Illustration: "I believe I have the felicity of addressing Sir John
Chester?" _Page 12._]

"I repeat, sir," says Jack, returning his bow, very stiff in the back,
"I repeat, I would have a word with you."

"On my soul, I protest you do me too much honour!" he murmured--"shall
we sit?" Jack nodded, and Mr. Tawnish sank into a chair between myself
and Bentley.

"Delightful weather we are having," says he, breaking in upon a somewhat
awkward pause, "though they do tell me the country needs rain most
damnably!"

"Mr. Tawnish," says Jack, giving himself a sudden thump in the chest, "I
have no mind to talk to you of the weather."