"Have you any business with me, good sir?" Carne would have spoken
rudely, but saw that rudeness would leave no mark upon a man like this.
"If so, I must ask you to be quick. And perhaps you will tell me who you
are."
"I think that you are Caryl Carne," said the stranger, not unpleasantly,
but as if it mattered very little who was Caryl Carne, or whether there
was any such existence.
Carne stared fiercely, for he was of touchy temper; but he might as
well have stared at a bucket of water in the hope of deranging its
tranquillity. "You know me. But I don't know you," he answered at last,
with a jerk of his reins.
"Be in no hurry," said the other, mildly; "the weather is fine, and time
plentiful. I hope to have much pleasant knowledge of you. I have the
honour to be your first cousin, Erle Twemlow. Shake hands with your
kinsman."
Carne offered his hand, but without his usual grace and self-possession.
Twemlow took it in his broad brown palm, in which it seemed to melt
away, firm though it was and muscular.
"I was going up to call on you," said Twemlow, who had acquired a
habit of speaking as if he meant all the world to hear. "I feel a deep
interest in your fortunes, and hope to improve them enormously. You
shall hear all about it when I come up. I have passed four years in the
wilds of Africa, where no white man ever trod before, and I have found
out things no white man knows. We call those people savages, but they
know a great deal more than we do.
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