Always a handsome man, with a clear transparent skin, intellectual features, thin nostrils well recurved and sensitive to every changing mood, and eyes that were almost womanish for size and for a certain languorous sensuousness, he might still have sat for the portrait of that Benedict Arnold who had braved the wrath of General Gates to save the day at the second battle of Stillwater. Yet there was a striking change, apparent even to one who had seen him as seldom as I had. The lips were set in thinner lines, the eyes were gloomy, and, when he turned them upon me, I saw a lurking devil of sullen suspicion in them. Also the deep furrows in his brow had grown still more marked and they had taken an upward and outward curve like the suggestion of a pair of horns. None the less, his reception of me was bland and cordial, made with a half-offering of his hand, which, I am happy to say, I found it possible to seem to overlook. “You are very welcome, Mr. Page,” he said, smiling with his lips and at the same time probing me with the eyes of gloomy distrust. “Sir Henry Clinton says kind things of you here”--waving the letter--“and I trust we shall go on to a better acquaintance.” Then, a little doubtfully: “Should I be able to place you more nearly?” I told him I thought not; that I had probably seen him oftener than he had me. Then I added the bold word which has slain many a better man--the word of open flattery. “Like many another who knows you even less well than I do, Mr. Arnold, I owe you a debt of gratitude. But for your courageous example, not a few men who are now faithfully serving the king would still be in Mr. Washington’s riff-raff army, fighting for that jack-o’-lantern thing called liberty. And, but for that same act of yours, I can most truthfully say that I should not be here this morning, trespassing on your good nature, sir.” It was very gross, and I do think Mr. Dick Sheridan himself could not have made the _doubl’ entendre_ more dramatic. Yet this gentlemanly turncoat, whose vanity was even greater than his villainy, gulped it down as I have seen our good Dominie Attlethorpe, of Williamsburg, swallow a luscious oyster. “You are either the most astute of young scapegraces, or the kindliest, Mr. Page,” he retorted, with the moral glutton’s satisfaction in every intonation. And then: “Have you breakfasted, sir?” I told him I had; whereupon he asked me to walk with him, saying that we could come at my business as well in that way as in any other, if I would so far indulge him.