Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/17

Exported from Wikisource on October 9, 2024

Mr. Iggs. I have not expressed myself—not expressed myself adequately. Come back."

His visitor, with the same air of deference and the same noiselessness of movement, returned to the chair. Northcote fixed two eyes of a devouring curiosity upon his bloodless face. They recoiled with a shock of encounter; two orbs flaming out of it in all their sunken brilliancy had looked within them. Also he beheld a mouth whose lips were curved with the divine mobility of a passion. The advocate clasped his hands to his sides to repress a fierce emotion of pain.

"Perhaps, Mr. Iggs," he said, "you have been down into the depths of the sea?"

His visitor brushed the green canopy of his mutilated bowler hat slowly and delicately upon the threadbare sleeve of his coat.

"That is true," he said; "but I would have you not forget that I have also walked upon the peaks of the highest mountains."

The roar of Fleet Street, the sough of the icy wind through the telegraph wires, the driving of the sleet against the window, and the drip drip of the water through the ceiling seemed to blend with the rich and full tones enveloping these words. A sensation of awe began to surmount the pity and the patronage that the outer semblance of his visitor had first aroused in the breast of the young man.

"With your permission, sir," he said, "I will go back to my original question, and I will frame it with a deeper sincerity: To what does Henry Northcote owe the honor of this visit?"

"This visit is paid to you, my friend, because for

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Title page

Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/17

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