"I shan't start till three o'clock train to-morrow, if you have anything to say to me," said the attorney, looking darkly and expectingly in Sir Jekyl's face.

"Yes, I'll think over everything. I'd like to have a good talk with you in the morning. You sleep here, you know, of course."

"Very kind. I hope I shan't be in your way, Sir Jekyl. Very happy."

Sir Jekyl rang the bell.

"I shan't let you off to-morrow, unless you really can't help it," he said; and, the servant entering, "Tell Mrs. Sinnott that Mr. Pelter remains here to-night, and would wish--_do_ you?--to run up to your room. Where's your luggage?"

"Precious light luggage it is. I left it at the hotel in the town--a small valise, and a----"

"Get it up here, do you mind, and let us know when Mr. Pelter's room is ready."

"Don't be long about dressing; we must join the ladies, you know, in the drawing-room. I wish, Pelter, there was no such thing as business; and that all attorneys, except you and Crowe, of course, were treated in this and the next world according to their deserts," an ambiguous compliment at which Pelter nodded slyly, with his hands in his pockets.

"You'll have to get us all the information you can sc.r.a.pe together, Sir Jekyl. You see they may have evidence of that deed--I mean the lost one, you know--and proving a marriage and the young gentleman legitimate. It may be a serious case--upon my word a _very_ serious case--do you see?

And term begins, you know, immediately so there really is no time to lose, and there's no harm in being ready."

"I'll have a long talk with you about it in the morning, and I am devilish glad you came--curse the whole thing!"

The servant here came to say that Mr. Pelter's room was ready, and his luggage sent for to the town.

"Come up, then--we'll look at your room."

So up they went, and Pelter declared himself charmed.

"Come to my room, Mr. Pelter--it's a long way off, and a confoundedly shabby crib; but I've got some very good cigars there," said Sir Jekyl, who was restless, and wished to hear the attorney more fully on this hated business.

CHAPTER XV.

The Pipe of Peace.

Sir Jekyl marched Mr. Pelter down the great stair again, intending to make the long journey rearward. As they reached the foot of the stairs, Monsieur Varbarriere, candle in hand, was approaching it on the way to his room. He was walking leisurely, as large men do after dinner, and was still some way off.

"By Jove! Why did not you tell me?" exclaimed the attorney, stopping short. "By the law! you've _got_ him here."

"Monsieur Varbarriere?" said the Baronet.

"Mr. Strangways, sir--_that's_ he."

"_That_ Strangways!" echoed the Baronet.

"Herbert Strangways," whispered Mr. Pelter, and by this time M.

Varbarriere was under the rich oak archway, and stopped, smiling darkly, and bowing a little to the Baronet, who was for a moment surprised into silence.

"How do you do, Mr. Strangways, sir?" said the attorney, advancing with a shrewd resolute smile, and extending his hand.

M. Varbarriere, without the slightest embarra.s.sment, took it, bowing with a courtly gravity.

"Ah, Monsieur Pelter?--yes, indeed--very happy to meet you again."

"Yes, sir--very happy, Mr. Strangways; so am I. Did not know you were in this part of the world, Mr. Strangways, sir. You remember Havre, sir?"

"Perfectly--yes. You did not know me by the name of Varbarriere, which name I adopted on purchasing the Varbarriere estates shortly after I met you at Havre, on becoming a naturalised subject of France."

"Wonderful little changed, Monsieur Barvarrian--fat, sir--a little stouter--in good case, Mr. Strangways; but six years, you _know_, sir, does not _count_ for _nothing_--ha, ha, ha!"

"You have the goodness to flatter me, I fear," answered Varbarriere, with a smile somewhat contemptuous, and in his deep tones of banter.

"This is my friend, Mr. Strangways, if he'll allow me to call him so--Mr. Herbert Strangways, Sir Jekyl," said the polite attorney, presenting his own guest to the Baronet.

"And so, Monsieur Varbarriere, I find I have an additional reason to rejoice in having made your acquaintance, inasmuch as it revives a very old one, so old that I almost fear you may have forgotten it. You remember our poor friend, Guy Deverell, and--"

"Perfectly, Sir Jekyl, and I was often tempted to ask you the same question; but--but you know there's a _melancholy_--and we were so very happy here, I had not courage to invite the sadness of the retrospect, though a very remote one. I believe I was right, Sir Jekyl. Life's true philosophy is to extract from the present all it can yield of happiness, and to bury our dead out of our sight."

"I dare say--I'm much of that way of thinking myself. And--dear me!--I--I suppose I'm very much altered." He was looking at Varbarriere, and trying to recover in the heavy frame and ponderous features before him the image of that Herbert Strangways whom, in the days of his early c.o.xcombry, he had treated with a becoming impertinence.

"No--you're wonderfully little changed--I say honestly--quite wonderfully like what I remember you. And I--I know what a transformation I am--perfectly," said Varbarriere.

And he stood before Sir Jekyl, as he would display a portrait, full front--Sir Jekyl held a silver candlestick in his hand, Monsieur Varbarriere his in his--and they stood face to face--in a dream of the past.

Varbarriere's mystic smile expanded to a grin, and the grin broke into a laugh--deep and loud--not insulting--not sneering.

In that explosion of sonorous and enigmatic merriment Sir Jekyl joined--perhaps a little hesitatingly and coldly, for he was trying, I think, to read the riddle--wishing to be quite sure that he might be pleased, and accept these vibrations as sounds of reconciliation.

There was nothing quite to forbid it.

"I see," said Monsieur Varbarriere, in tones still disturbed by laughter, "in spite of your politeness, Sir Jekyl, what sort of impression my metamorphosis produces. Where is the raw-boned youth--so tall and gawky, that, egad! London bucks were ashamed to acknowledge him in the street, and when they did speak could not forbear breaking his gawky bones with their jokes?--ha, ha, ha! Now, lo! here he stands--the grand old black swine, on hind legs--hog-backed--and with mighty paunch and face all draped in fat. Bah! ha, ha, ha! What a magician is Father Time! Look and laugh, sir--you cannot laugh more than I."

"I laugh at your fantastic caricature, so utterly unlike what I see.

There's a change, it's true, but no more than years usually bring; and, by Jove! I'd much rather any day grow a little full, for _my_ part, than turn, like some fellows, into a scarecrow."

"No, no--no scarecrow, certainly," still laughed Varbarriere.

"Egad, no," laughed the attorney in chorus. "No corners there, sir--ribs well covered--hey? nothing like it coming on winter;" and grinning pleasantly, he winked at Sir Jekyl, who somehow neither heard nor saw him, but said--

"Mr. Pelter, my law adviser here, was good enough to say he'd come to my room, which you know so well, Monsieur Varbarriere, and smoke a cigar.

You can't do better--pray let me persuade you."

He was in fact tolerably easily persuaded, and the three gentlemen together--Sir Jekyl feeling as if he was walking in a dream, and leading the way affably--reached that snuggery which Varbarriere had visited so often before.

"Just _one_--they _are_ so good," said he. "We are to go to the drawing-room--aren't we?"

"Oh, certainly. I think you'll like these--they're rather good, Mr.

Pelter. You know them, Monsieur Varbarriere."