All men had liked him, and spoken well
of him throughout his long and hard-worked career.
Thorpe was very fond of him indeed, and put a respectful
cordiality into his grasp of the proffered hand.
Then he looked, with a certain thinly-veiled bluntness
of enquiry, past the Marquis to his companion.
"You were very kind to give me the appointment,"
said Lord Chaldon, with a little purring gloss of affability
upon the earnestness of his tone. "I wish very much
to introduce to you my friend, my old friend I may say,
Monsieur Alexandre Fromentin. We slept together under
the same tent, in the Persian country beyond Bagdad--oh,
it must have been quite forty years ago. We were youngsters
looking to win our first spurs then--I in my line, he in his.
And often since we have renewed that old friendship--at many
different places--India, and Constantinople, and Egypt.
I wish heartily to commend him to your--your kindness."
Thorpe had perfunctorily shaken hands with the stranger--a tall,
slender, sharp-faced, clean-shaven, narrow-shouldered man,
who by these accounts of his years ought not to have such
excessively black hair. He bowed in a foreign fashion,
and uttered some words which Thorpe, though he recognized
them as English in intent, failed to follow. The voice
was that of an elderly man, and at a second glance there
were plenty of proofs that he might have been older
than the Marquis, out there in Persia, forty years ago.
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