"Mr. Jost's own man, Excellency."
"Has he gone?"
"Yes, Excellency."
"Wait!" And sitting down he wrote hastily the following lines:
"DEAR SIR,--Your letter is inexplicable. I sent no messenger to you
last night. If you have any explanation to offer, I shall be disengaged
and alone till 11.30 this morning.
"Yours truly,--DE LUTERA."
Folding, sealing, and addressing this, he marked it 'Private' and gave
it to his man.
"Take this yourself," he said, "and put it into Mr. Jost's own hands.
Trust no one to deliver it. Ask to see him personally, and then give it
to him. You understand?"
"Yes, Excellency."
His note thus despatched, the Marquis threw himself down in his arm-
chair, and again read Jost's mysterious communication.
"Whatever messenger has passed himself off as coming from me, Jost must
have been crazy to receive him without credentials," he said. "There
must be a mistake somewhere!"
A vague alarm troubled him; he was not moved by conscientious scruples,
but the idea that any of his secret moves should be 'explained' to a
stranger was, to say the least of it, annoying, and not conducive to
the tranquillity of his mind. A thousand awkward possibilities
suggested themselves at once to his brain, and as he carried a somewhat
excitable disposition under his heavy and phlegmatic exterior, he fumed
and fretted himself for the next half hour into an impatience which
only found vent in the prosaic and everyday performance of dressing
himself.
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