The momentary annoyance in Clarence’s face changed to a look of reflective curiosity.

“He said he knew you were at the theatre, and he would wait until you came home,” continued the man, dubiously watching his master’s face.  “He don’t know you’ve come in, sir, and—­and I can easily get rid of him.”

“No matter now.  I’ll see him, and,” added Clarence, with a faint smile, “let the carriage wait.”

Yet, as he turned towards the library he was by no means certain that an interview with the old associate of his boyhood under Judge Peyton’s guardianship would divert his mind.  Yet he let no trace of his doubts nor of his past gloom show in his face as he entered the room.

Mr. Hooker was apparently examining the elegant furniture and luxurious accommodation with his usual resentful enviousness.  Clarence had got a “soft thing.”  That it was more or less the result of his “artfulness,” and that he was unduly “puffed up” by it, was, in Hooker’s characteristic reasoning, equally clear.  As his host smilingly advanced with outstretched hand, Mr. Hooker’s efforts to assume a proper abstraction of manner and contemptuous indifference to Clarence’s surroundings which should wound his vanity ended in his lolling back at full length in the chair with his eyes on the ceiling.  But, remembering suddenly that he was really the bearer of a message to Clarence, it struck him that his supine position was, from a theatrical view-point, infelicitous.  In his experiences of the stage he had never delivered a message in that way.  He rose awkwardly to his feet.

“It was so good of you to wait,” said Clarence courteously.

“Saw you in the theatre,” said Hooker brusquely.  “Third row in parquet.  Susy said it was you, and had suthin’ to say to you.  Suthin’ you ought to know,” he continued, with a slight return of his old mystery of manner which Clarence so well remembered.  “You saw her—­she fetched the house with that flag business, eh?  She knows which way the cat is going to jump, you bet.  I tell you, for all the blowing of these secessionists, the Union’s goin’ to pay!  Yes, sir!” He stopped, glanced round the handsome room, and added darkly, “Mebbee better than this.”

With the memory of Hooker’s characteristic fondness for mystery still in his mind, Clarence overlooked the innuendo, and said smilingly,—­

“Why didn’t you bring Mrs. Hooker here?  I should have been honored with her company.”

Mr. Hooker frowned slightly at this seeming levity.

“Never goes out after a performance.  Nervous exhaustion.  Left her at our rooms in Market Street.  We can drive there in ten minutes.  That’s why I asked to have the carriage wait.”

Clarence hesitated.  Without caring in the least to renew the acquaintance of his old playmate and sweetheart, a meeting that night in some vague way suggested to him a providential diversion.  Nor was he deceived by any gravity in the message.  With his remembrance of Susy’s theatrical tendencies, he was quite prepared for any capricious futile extravagance.