"Shall I light the lamp, your lordship?" he asked.
The Marquis glanced towards the oriel windows, through which the light came scantily, and at the figure of James Borden, advancing now from somewhere in the dim recesses of the room--an apartment which remained marvellously little altered since the days when it had contained the laboriously collected books of a Franciscan order of Monks.
"Perhaps it would be as well, Gossett," his master assented. "You wish to see me?" he added, turning towards his visitor.
James Borden had come posthaste from London, acting upon an impulse which had swept him off his feet. All the way down he had been the prey to turbulent thoughts. A hundred different ways of conducting this interview had presented themselves before him with such facility that he had come to look upon it as one of the easiest things on earth. Yet now the moment had arrived he was conscious of an unexpected embarrassment. The strange tranquillity of the house and this stately apartment, the personality of the Marquis himself--serene, slightly curious, yet with that indefinable air of good-breeding which magnifies the obligations of a host--had a paralysing effect upon him. He was tongue-tied, uncertain of himself. All the many openings which had come to him so readily faded away.
"My name is Borden," he announced. "I have come here, hoping for a short conversation with you."
The Marquis made no immediate reply. He watched the lighting of a huge lamp which Gossett silently placed in the middle of an ebony black writing table, to the side of which he had already drawn up two high-backed chairs.
"Is there anything else your lordship desires?" the man asked.
The Marquis pointed towards one of the chairs, and seated himself in the other.
"I shall be very glad to hear of your business with me, Mr. Borden," he said courteously.
His visitor had lost none of his embarrassment. The Marquis, in his old-fashioned dinner clothes, his black stock, the fob which hung from his waistcoat, his finely chiselled features, and that mysterious air of being entirely in touch with his surroundings, had him at a disadvantage from the first. Borden was wearing the somewhat shabby blue serge suit in which he had travelled all day, and which he had neglected to brush. He had been too much in earnest about his mission to do more than make the most hasty toilet at the hotel. The high-backed chair, which suited the Marquis so well, was an unfamiliar article of furniture to him, and he sat upon it stiffly and without ease. Nevertheless, he reminded himself that he was there--he must say what he had come to say.