with tightly compressed lips, 'lest his breath should be smelt,' with a grey tuft of hair standing up in the very middle of his forehead. He came in, bowed, and handed my grandmother on an iron tray a large letter with an heraldic seal. My grandmother put on her spectacles, read the letter through. . . .
'Is he here?' she asked.
'What is my lady pleased . . .' Filippitch began timidly.
'Imbecile! The man who brought the letter—is he here?'
'He is here, to be sure he is. . . . He is sitting in the counting-house.'
My grandmother rattled her amber rosary beads. . . .
'Tell him to come to me. . . . And you, sir,' she turned to me, 'sit still.'
As it was, I was sitting perfectly still in my corner, on the stool assigned to me.
My grandmother kept me well in hand!
Five minutes later there came into the room a man of five-and-thirty, black-haired and swarthy, with broad cheek-bones, a face marked with smallpox, a hook nose, and thick eyebrows, from under which the small grey eyes looked out with mournful composure. The colour of the eyes and their expression were out of keeping with the Oriental cast of the rest of the face. The man was dressed in a
78
