The company were now pecking at those fruits over which Sir Jekyl was wont to chuckle grimly, making pleasant satire on his gardener, vowing he kept an Aladdin's garden, and that his greengages were emeralds, and his gooseberries rubies.
In the midst of the talk, the grave and somewhat corpulent butler stood behind his master's chair, and murmured something mildly in his ear.
"Pullet! I never heard of him. If he had come a little earlier with a knife and fork in his back, we'd have given a good account of him."
His jokes were chuckled to Lady Alice, who received them drowsily.
"A middlish sort of a person, rayther respectable, I should say, sir; but dusty from his journey."
"Well, give him some wine, and let him have dinner, if he has not had it before, and bring in his card just now."
All this occurred without exciting attention or withdrawing Sir Jekyl from any sustained conversation, for he and Lady Alice had been left high and dry on the bank together by the flow and ebb of talk, which at this moment kept the room in a rattle; and Sir Jekyl only now and then troubled her with a word.
"Pullet!" thought Sir Jekyl, he knew not why, uneasily. "Who the devil's Pullet, and what the plague can Pullet want? It can't be Paulett--can it? There's nothing on earth Paulett can want of me, and he would not come at this hour. Pullet--Pullet--let us see." But he _could_ not see, there was not a soul he knew who bore that name.
"He's eating his dinner, sir, the gentleman, sir, in the small parlour, and says you'll know him quite well, sir, when you see him," murmured the butler, "and more--"
"He said, sir, please, it would be time enough when he had heat his dinner."
And Sir Jekyl drank a glass of claret, and returned to his ruminations.
"So, I shall know Pullet quite well when I see him," mused the Baronet, "and he'll let me have his card when he has had his dinner--a cool gentleman, whatever else he may be." About this Pullet, however, Sir Jekyl experienced a most uncomfortable suspense and curiosity. A bird of ill omen he seemed to him--an angel of sorrow, he knew not why, in a mask.
While the Baronet sipped his claret, and walked quite alone in the midst of his company, picking his anxious steps, and hearing strange sounds through his valley of the shadow of death, the promiscuous assemblage of ladies and gentlemen dissolved itself. The fair sex rose, after their wont, smiled their last on the sable file of gentlemen, who stood politely, napkin in hand, simpering over the backs of their chairs, and, some of them majestically alone, others sliding their fair hands affectionately within the others' arms, glided through the door in celestial procession.