They remained there unopened till the charwoman removed them in the evening. On his desk, as he glanced towards it, was a letter from Nona.
He turned it over in his hands--the small neat script. She never before had written to him at the office. It bore the London postmark. She would be writing from their town house. It would be to say she was coming back.... But she never wrote on the occasions of her return; they just met.... And she had never before written to the office.
Mr. Fortune appeared at the communicating door. Sabre put the letter into his pocket and turned towards him.
Mr. Fortune came into the room. With him was a young man, a youth, whose face was vaguely familiar to Sabre; Twyning behind.
"Ah, Sabre," said Mr. Fortune. "Good morning, Sabre. This is rather a larger number of visitors than you would commonly expect, but we are a larger staff this morning than we have heretofore been. I am bringing in to you a new member of our staff." He indicated the young man beside him. "A new member but bearing an old name. A chip of the old block--the old Twyning block." He smiled, stroking his whale-like front rather as though this pleasantry had proceeded from its depths and he was congratulating it. The young man smiled. Twyning, edging forward from the background, also smiled. All the smiles were rather nervous. This was natural in the new member of the staff but in Twyning and Mr. Fortune gave Sabre the feeling that for some reason they were not entirely at ease. His immediate thought had been that it was an odd thing to have taken on young Twyning without mentioning it even casually to him. It was significant of his estrangement in the office; but their self-conscious manner was even more significant: it suggested that he had been kept out of the plan deliberately.
He gave the young man his hand. "Why, that's very nice," he said. "I thought I knew your face. I think I've seen you with your father. You've been in Blade and Parson's place, haven't you?"
Young Twyning replied that he had. He had his father's rather quick and stiff manner of speaking. He was fair-haired and complexioned, good-looking in a sharp-featured way, a juvenile edition of his father in a different colouring.