‘No,’ said the attorney.  ’About your height, as I guessed for the tailors, and I see nothing wrong with the result.  But, somehow, he commands an atmosphere; he has a spacious manner; and he has kept up, all through life, such a volume of racket about his personality, with his chaises and his racers and his dicings, and I know not what—­that somehow he imposes!  It seems, when the farce is done, and he locked in Fleet prison—­and nobody left but Buonaparte and Lord Wellington and the Hetman Platoff to make a work about—­the world will be in a comparison quite tranquil.  But this is beside the mark,’ he added, with an effort, turning again from the window.  ’We are now under fire, Mr. Anne, as you soldiers would say, and it is high time we should prepare to go into action.  He must not see you; that would be fatal.  All that he knows at present is that you resemble him, and that is much more than enough.  If it were possible, it would be well he should not know you were in the house.’

‘Quite impossible, depend upon it,’ said I.  ’Some of the servants are directly in his interests, perhaps in his pay:  Dawson, for an example.’

‘My own idea!’ cried Romaine.  ‘And at least,’ he added, as the first of the chaises drew up with a dash in front of the portico, ‘it is now too late.  Here he is.’

We stood listening, with a strange anxiety, to the various noises that awoke in the silent house:  the sound of doors opening and closing, the sound of feet near at hand and farther off.  It was plain the arrival of my cousin was a matter of moment, almost of parade, to the household.  And suddenly, out of this confused and distant bustle, a rapid and light tread became distinguishable.  We heard it come upstairs, draw near along the corridor, pause at the door, and a stealthy and hasty rapping succeeded.

‘Mr. Anne—­Mr. Anne, sir!  Let me in!’ said the voice of Rowley.

We admitted the lad, and locked the door again behind him.

‘It’s him, sir,’ he panted.  ‘He’ve come.’

‘You mean the Viscount?’ said I.  ’So we supposed.  But come, Rowley—­out with the rest of it!  You have more to tell us, or your face belies you !’

‘Mr. Anne, I do,’ he said.  ’Mr. Romaine, sir, you’re a friend of his, ain’t you?’

‘Yes, George, I am a friend of his,’ said Romaine, and, to my great surprise, laid his hand upon my shoulder.

‘Well, it’s this way,’ said Rowley—­’Mr. Powl have been at me!  It’s to play the spy!  I thought he was at it from the first!  From the first I see what he was after—­coming round and round, and hinting things!  But to-night he outs with it plump!  I’m to let him hear all what you’re to do beforehand, he says; and he gave me this for an arnest’—­holding up half a guinea; ’and I took it, so I did!  Strike me sky-blue scarlet?’ says he, adducing the words of the mock oath; and he looked askance at me as he did so.