"The Marquis of Chaldon--and a gentleman, with him."
The announcement, from a clerk who had noiselessly opened
the door, imposed itself with decorum upon Thorpe's reverie.
"Who is the gentleman with him?" Thorpe began austerely
to ask, after an instant's hesitation. But this briefest
of delays had brought the callers into plain view behind
the clerk, and with a slight gesture the master assented
to their entrance.
This large apartment was no longer called the Board
Room by anybody. By tacit processes, it had become
Mr. Thorpe's room. Not even the titular Chairman
of the Company, the renowned and eminent Lord Chaldon,
ex-Ambassador and ex-Viceroy, entered this chamber
now with any assumption of proprietorship in it.
No hint of a recollection that there were such things
as the Company and the Board, or that he was nominally
the head of both, expressed itself in his Lordship's
demeanour as he advanced, his hand a little extended.
The noble Chairman was white of beard and hair, and extremely
courteous of manner--a small, carefully-clad, gracious
old gentleman, whose mild pink countenance had, with years
of anxiety about ways and means, disposed itself in lines
which produced a chronic expression of solicitude.
A nervous affection of the eyelids lent to this look,
at intervals, a beseeching quality which embarrassed
the beholder.
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