Mr. St. George’s new valet was an Englishman named Dobbs. He was a well-trained servant—noiseless, deferential, smooth-spoken, and treating all his master’s whims and capricious fluctuations of temper as the merest matter of course: a man who would allow himself to be sworn at, and called an idiot, an ass, the biggest blockhead in existence; and retaliate only with a faint smile of deprecation, and a gentle rubbing of his lean white hands. Mr. St. George had a strange dislike to being left alone. When he could not have any other society—that is to say, early in the morning, and late at night, after everybody else was in bed—he would rather have the company of Dobbs than that of his own thoughts only. In a morning, between six and seven—long before daylight in winter—Dobbs was there in his master’s room, arranging his clothes, laying out his dressing-case, mixing him his cup of chocolate, supplying him with his brandy, doing anything—it did not matter what—so long as he was not out of his master’s sight for many minutes at a time. Then at night, late, when the old house was as quiet as a tomb, Mr. St. George would sit in his dressing-room, drinking cold brandy-and-water, and smoking cigars till far into the small hours. It was Dobbs’s duty at such times to sit with his master in a chair removed a few yards away, and a little behind that of Mr. St. George. It was not that Kester wanted him there for conversational purposes, for he rarely condescended to speak to him except to ask him for something that he wanted. The man’s silent presence was all that he required, and for such a duty as that Dobbs was invaluable. He never dozed—he would have sat up all night without closing an eye—he never read, he never sneezed or coughed, or made his presence objectionable in any way; and he never spoke unless first spoken to. Silent, watchful, and alert, he was always there and always the same. Mr. St. George never slept without a light in his room, and Dobbs, who had a little sofa-bed in the dressing-room, and who was a remarkably light sleeper, was instructed to arouse his master at once should he hear the latter begin to toss about or moan in his sleep. The eighth of February had come. Kester was beginning to think that it was about time his visit to Park Newton should be brought to a close. He had two horses in training at Chantilly, on which he based some brilliant expectations, and his heart and thoughts were in the stable with his pets. Every day that he prolonged his stay at Park Newton merely served to deepen his hatred of the place. “I shall have a fit of horrors if I stay here much longer,” he said to himself. “I’ll invent some important business, and try to get away the day after to-morrow. I must persuade the old boy to come and spend a month with me at Chantilly when the spring sets fairly in.”