in thought.

The intervening six months had effected visible changes in the outer
man. One noted most readily that the face had grown fuller in its
lower parts, and was far less browned than formerly. The large, heavy
countenance, with its square jaws masked now under increased flesh, its
beginnings of a double-chin, and its slightly flabby effect of pallor,
was no longer lacking in individual distinction. It was palpably the
visage of a dictator. The moustache had been cut down to military
brevity, and the line of mouth below it was eloquent of rough power. The
steady grey eyes, seemingly smaller yet more conspicuous than before,
revealed in their glance new elements of secretiveness, of strategy
supported by abundant and confident personal force.

The man himself seemed scarcely to have grown stouter. He held himself
more compactly, as it were; seemed more the master of all his physical
expressions. He was dressed like a magnate who was also a person of
taste. There was a flower in the lapel of his well-shaped frock-coat,
and the rustle of his starched and spotless white waistcoat murmured
pleasantly of refined toilets.

"The Marquis of Chaldon--and a gentleman, with him."

The announcement, from a clerk who had noiselessly opened the door,
imposed itself with decorum upon Thorpe's reverie.

"Who is the gentleman with him?" Thorpe began austerely to ask, after
an instant's hesitation. But this briefest of delays had brought the
callers into plain view behind the clerk, and with a slight gesture the
master assented to their entrance.

This large apartment was no longer called the Board Room by anybody. By
tacit processes, it had become Mr. Thorpe's room. Not even the titular
Chairman of the Company, the renowned and eminent Lord Chaldon,
ex-Ambassador and ex-Viceroy, entered this chamber now with any
assumption of proprietorship in it. No hint of a recollection that there
were such things as the Company and the Board, or that he was nominally
the head of both, expressed itself in his Lordship's demeanour as he
advanced, his hand a little extended.

The noble Chairman was white of beard and hair, and extremely courteous
of manner--a small, carefully-clad, gracious old gentleman, whose
mild pink countenance had, with years of anxiety about ways and
means, disposed itself in lines which produced a chronic expression of
solicitude. A nervous affection of the eyelids lent to this look, at
intervals, a beseeching qua