“We’ve another batch of visitors coming,--Stenson amongst them, by the bye.”
Furley nodded. His eyes narrowed, and little lines appeared at their corners.
“I can’t imagine,” he confessed. “What brings Stenson down to Maltenby. I should have thought that your governor and he could scarcely spend ten minutes together without quarrelling!”
“They never do spend ten minutes together alone,” Julian replied drily. “I see to that. Then my mother, you know, has the knack of getting interesting people together. The Bishop is coming, amongst others. And, Furley, I wanted to ask you--do you know anything of a young woman--she is half Russian, I believe--who calls herself Miss Catherine Abbeway?”
“Yes, I know her,” was the brief rejoinder.
“She lived in Russia for some years, it seems,” Julian continued. “Her mother was Russian--a great writer on social subjects.”
“Miss Abbeway is rather that way herself,” he remarked. “I’ve heard her lecture in the East End. She has got hold of the woman’s side of the Labour question as well as any one I ever came across.”
“She is a most remarkably attractive young person,” Julian declared pensively.
“Yes, she’s good-looking. A countess in her own right, they tell me, but she keeps her title secret for fear of losing influence with the working classes. She did a lot of good down Poplar way. Shouldn’t have thought she’d have been your sort, Julian.”
Julian smiled--rather a peculiar, introspective smile.
“I, too, can, be serious sometimes,” he said.
His friend thrust his hands into his trousers pocket and, leaning back in his chair, looked steadfastly at his guest.
“I believe you can, Julian,” he admitted. “Sometimes I am not quite sure that I understand you. That’s the worst of a man with the gift for silence.”
“You’re not a great talker yourself,” the younger man reminded his host.
“When you get me going on my own subject,” Furley remarked, “I find it hard to stop, and you are a wonderful listener. Have you got any views of your own? I never hear them.”
Julian drew the box of cigarettes towards him.
“Oh, yes, I’ve views of my own,” he confessed. “Some day, perhaps, you shall know what they are.”
“A man of mystery!” his friend jeered good-naturedly.
Julian lit his cigarette and watched the smoke curl upward.