For Cosmo stepped out to greet his father warmly; he congratulated him heartily on having been able to return in time; he told the flurried merchant how long and anxiously the financier had waited; with the pardonable exaggeration of filial care, he ante-dated Mr Barnett’s advent and his own by a little over three hours; he insinuated in every tone that nothing but the overwhelming importance of his father’s judgment could have led Mr Barnett to so great an effort. Mr Burden was but partially appeased; he sat down in a stiff chair, not his own, and faced Mr Barnett sternly as one might a witness in a court; the Leader of Men returned his gaze with a beam of comatose good nature. His head leaned slightly to the right, his upper eyelids (which were double, as are those of the great Andean bird) dropped deeply down, but from the little slit of prominent eye beneath a liquid humour still gleamed. That humour played upon Mr Burden steadily for some forty seconds, and then the voice spoke. “I am ver’ happy to zee you, Mr Burten.” A doubt, a disgusting suspicion, ran through Mr Burden’s mind; it leapt into a formed phrase; he felt the words coming—but it never reached his lips. He controlled himself during the pause that followed, and, during that pause, it was most evident that Mr Barnett’s vast organising mind was plunging deeper and deeper into the baths of silence and recuperation. When he spoke next, it was with eyes quite shut, and head bending forward irregularly at intervals. “About that fellow Âppott?” he said. Mr Burden did not answer. “That fellow Âppott,” Mr Barnett’s big head wagged slowly in disapproval, “he is obstinate—but he is O.K. Alright. Aha? Not so?” Mr Barnett groped with his right hand as though to lay it upon Mr Burden’s knee; but, finding in the way the arm of the deep chair on which he sat, he patted that affectionately instead, and closed his eyes again, and was silent. The younger and more active, though lesser, mind of Cosmo, came to the aid of Mr Barnett, whom fatigue, coupled with his remaining difficulties in the English tongue, had led into some vagueness of expression. Cosmo was the better fitted to speak, from the fact that Mr Barnett, earlier in the evening, when his mood had been for some reason more sprightly, had fully explained how and why Mr Abbott was necessary to the M’Korio. “Father,” said Cosmo, rapidly, “you know how very few men there are in London who know one subject; Mr Abbott really does know the Delta. That is the whole point. But I am not sure that Mr Barnett quite understands....” [Illustration: MR BARNETT THOROUGHLY AT HOME] Mr Barnett smiled and grunted; he was following, but indistinctly. “Of course you know the difficulty, and I suppose I know it too. It all comes from what is finest in his nature; but the suspicion is intolerable, father. And that is another reason why he ought to come in.”