"Oh, then your friend knows Lady Holme?"
"He did once. I believe he isn't allowed to now. Ah, here is Carey!"
A quick step was audible on the stairs, the door was opened, and a broad,
middle-sized young man, with red hair, a huge red moustache and fierce
red-brown eyes, entered swiftly with an air of ruthless determination.
"I came, but I shall be devilish bad company to-night," he said at once,
looking at Sir Donald.
"We'll cheer you up. Let me introduce you to Sir Donald Ulford--Mr.
Rupert Carey."
Carey shook Sir Donald by the hand.
"Glad to meet you," he said abruptly. "I've carried your Persian poems
round the world with me. They lay in my trunk cheek by jowl with
God-forsaken, glorious old Omar."
A dusky red flush appeared in Sir Donald's hollow cheeks.
"Really," he said, with obvious embarrassment, "I--they were a great
failure. 'Obviously the poems of a man likely to be successful in dealing
with finance,' as /The Times/ said in reviewing them."
"Well, in the course of your career you've done some good things for
England financially, haven't you?--not very publicly, perhaps, but as a
minister abroad."
"Yes. To come forward as a poet was certainly a mistake."
"Any fool could see the faults in your book. True Persia all the same
though. I saw all the faults and read 'em twenty times."
He flung himself down in the big armchair. Sir Donald could see now that
there was a shining of misery in his big, rather ugly, eyes.
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