To-night, when the cloth had been removed that they might eat fruit, Denis was informed that there was a gentleman waiting to see him.  The gentleman had not vouchsafed either his name or business, so he could obviously wait a little longer, till Denis had finished his own business.  In twenty minutes Denis went to the library, and there found Hilary Margerison, sitting by the fire in a great coat and muffler and looking cold.  When he rose and faced him, Denis saw that he also looked paler than of old, and thinner, and less perfectly shaved, and his hair was longer.  He might have been called seedy-looking; he might have been Sidney Carton in “The Only Way”; he had always that touch of the dramatic about him that suggested a stage character.  He had a bad cough.

“Oh,” said Urquhart, polite and feeling embarrassed; “how do you do?  I’m sorry to have kept you waiting; they didn’t tell me who it was.  Sit down, won’t you?”

Hilary said thanks, he thought not.  He had a keen sense of the fit.  So he refused the cigarette Urquhart offered him, and stood by the fire, looking at the floor.  Urquhart stood opposite him, and thought how ill and how little reputable he looked.

Hilary said, in his high, sweet, husky voice, “It is no use beating about the bush.  I want help.  We are in need; we are horribly hard up, to put it baldly.  That has passed between your family and mine which makes you the last person I should wish to appeal to as a beggar.  I propose a business transaction.”  He paused to cough.

Urquhart, feeling impatient at the prospect of a provoking interview when he wanted to be playing bridge, said “Yes?” politely.

“You,” said Hilary, “are intending to stand as a candidate for this constituency.  You require for that, I fancy, a reputation wholly untarnished; the least breath dimming it would be for you a disastrous calamity.  I have some information which, if sent to the local Liberal paper, would seriously tell against you in the public mind.  It is here.”

He took it out of his breast pocket and handed it to Urquhart—­a type-written sheet of paper.  He must certainly have been to a provincial theatre lately; he had hit its manners and methods to a nicety, the silly ass.

Urquhart took the paper gingerly and did not look at it.

“Thanks; but ...  I don’t know that I am interested, do you know.  Isn’t this all rather silly, Mr. Margerison?”

“If you will oblige me by reading it,” said Mr. Margerison.

So Urquhart obliged him.  It was all about him, as was to be expected; enough to make a column of the Berkshire Press.

“Well?” said Hilary, when he had done.

“Well,” said Urquhart, folding up the paper and returning it, “thank you for showing it me.  But again I must say that I am not particularly interested.  Of course you will send anything you like to any paper you like; it is no business of mine.  There’s the libel law, as of course you know; newspapers are as a rule rather careful about that.  No respectable paper, I needn’t say, would care to use such copy as this of yours....  Well, good night....  Oh, by the way, I suppose your brother told you all that?”