‘Positively, my dear Fleetwood, you know,’ Sir Meeson expostulated, ’I am under orders; I don’t see how—­I really can’t go on without you.’

‘Please yourself.  This gentleman is my friend, Mr. Woodseer.’

Sir Meeson Corby was a plump little beau of forty, at war with his fat and accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory.  His tightness made his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, and could hardly hold on a leg; but the presentation of a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, carrying a tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with disorderly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwood’s friend—­the friend of the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain!—­fixed him in a perked attitude of inquiry that exhausted interrogatives.  Woodseer passed him, slouching a bow.  The circular stare of Sir Meeson seemed unable to contract.  He directed it on Lord Fleetwood, and was then reminded that he dealt with prickles.

‘Where have you been?’ he said, blinking to refresh his eyeballs.  ’I missed you, I ran round and round the town after you.’

‘I have been to the lake.’

‘Queer fish there!’ Sir Meeson dropped a glance on the capture.

Lord Fleetwood took Woodseer’s arm.  ‘Do you eat with us?’ he asked the baronet, who had stayed his eating for an hour and was famished; so they strode to the dining-room.

‘Do you wash, sir, before eating?’ Sir Meeson said to Woodseer, caressing his hands when they had seated themselves at table.  ’Appliances are to be found in this hotel.’

‘Soap?’ said Lord Fleetwood.

‘Soap—­at least, in my chamber.’

‘Fetch it, please.’

Sir Meeson, of course, could not hear that.  He requested the waiter to show the gentleman to a room.

Lord Fleetwood ordered the waiter to bring a handbasin and towel.  ’We’re off directly and must eat at once,’ he said.

‘Soap—­soap! my dear Fleetwood,’ Sir Meeson knuckled on the table, to impress it that his appetite and his gorge demanded a thorough cleansing of those fingers, if they were to sit at one board.

‘Let the waiter fetch it.’

‘The soap is in my portmanteau.’

‘You spoke of it as a necessity for this gentleman and me.  Bring it.’

Woodseer had risen.  Lord Fleetwood motioned him down.  He kept an eye dead—­as marble on Corby, who muttered:  ’You can’t mean that you ask me . . . ?’ But the alternative was forced on Sir Meeson by too strong a power of the implacable eye; there was thunder in it, a continuity of gaze forcefuller than repetitions of the word.  He knew Lord Fleetwood.  Men privileged to attend on him were dogs to the flinty young despot:  they were sure to be called upon to expiate the faintest offence to him.  He had hastily to consider, that he was banished beyond appeal, with the whole torture of banishment to an adorer of the Countess Livia, or else the mad behest must be obeyed.  He protested, shrugged, sat fast, and sprang up, remarking, that he went with all the willingness imaginable.  It could not have been the first occasion.