"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."
"I've hardly ever smoked such tobacco. Once, by a chance, at Lyons, I lighted on a box very like these--that is, about a third of them--but hardly so good."
"We've smoked some of these very pleasantly together," said Sir Jekyl, cultivating genial relations.
Varbarriere, who had already one between his lips, grunted a polite assent with a nod. You would have thought that his whole soul was in his tobacco, as his dark eyes dreamily followed the smoke that thinly streamed from his lips. His mind, however, was busy in conjecturing what the attorney had come about, and how much he knew of his case and his plans. So the three gentlemen puffed away in silence for a time.
"Your nephew, Mr. Guy Strangways, I hope we are soon to see him again?" asked Sir Jekyl, removing his cigar for a moment.
"You are very good. Yes, I hope. In fact, though I call it business, it is only a folly which displeases me, which he has promised shall end; and whenever I choose to shake hands, he will come to my side. There is no real quarrel, mind," and Varbarriere laughed, "only I must cure him of his nonsense."
"Well, then we may hope very soon to see Mr. Strangways. I _call_ him Strangways, you know, because he has assumed that name, I suppose, permanently."
"Well, I think so. His real name is Deverell--a very near relation, and, in fact, representative of our poor friend Guy. His friends all thought it best he should drop it, with its sad associations, and assume a name that may be of some little use to him among more affluent relatives," said M. Varbarriere, who had resolved to be frank as day and harmless as doves, and to disarm suspicion adroitly.
"A particularly handsome fellow--a distinguished-looking young man. How many things, Monsieur Varbarriere, we wish undone as we get on in life!"
The attorney lay back in his chair, his hands in his pockets, his heels on the carpet, his cigar pointing up to the ceiling, and his eyes closed luxuriously. He intended making a note of everything.
"I hope to get him on rapidly in the French service," resumed Varbarriere, "and I can make him pretty comfortable myself while I live, and more so after I'm gone; and in the meantime I am glad to put him in a field where he must exert himself, and see something of labour as well as of life."