"Good evening, my lord," he said, addressing me with ceremony, and a sort of dignity. "I little thought to see you here on this business. It is the best news I have had myself or have had to give to others this many a day. It shall be well represented, and the risk you run. And whatever be thought on this side, believe me, at St. Germain's----" "Hush!" cried the first man, interrupting him at that, and rather sharply. I think he had been too much surprised to speak before. "You are too hasty, sir," he continued. "There must be a mistake here. The gentleman to whom you are speaking----" "There is no mistake. This gentleman and I are well acquainted," the other responded coolly, and in the tone of a man who knows what he is doing. And then to me, and with a different air, "My lord, you may not wish to say your name aloud; that I can understand, and this is no very safe place for either of us. But if we could meet somewhere, say at----" "Hush, sir," the man with the handkerchief cried, and this time almost angrily. "There _is_ a mistake here, and in a moment you will say too much, if you have not said it already. This gentleman--if he is a gentleman--brings a letter from R. F., and is no more of a lord, I'll be sworn, than I am!" "From R. F.?" "Yes; and therefore if he is the person you think him---- But come, sir," he continued, eyeing me angrily, "what _is_ your name? End this." I did not wish to tell him, yet liked less to refuse. So I lied, and on the spur of the moment said, "Charles Taylor," that being the name of a man who lived below me. The taller man struck one hand into the other. "There! Charles!" he cried, and looked at me smiling. "I have an eye for faces, and if you are not----" "Nay, sir, I pray, be quiet," the man with the white handkerchief remonstrated. "Or if you are so certain----" and then he looked hard at me and frowned as if he began to feel a doubt. "Step this way and tell me what you think. This gentleman will doubtless excuse us, and wait a moment, whether he be whom you think him or not." I was as uneasy and as unwilling to stay as could be; but the man's tone was resolute, and I saw that he was not a man to cross; so with an ill grace I consented, and the two drawing aside together into the deeper shadow under the Piazza, began to confer. This left me to kick my heels impatiently, and watch out of the corner of my eye the loiterers under the other Piazza, to learn if any observed us. Fortunately they were taken up with a quarrel which had just broken out between two hackney coachmen, and though a man came near me, bringing a woman, he had no eyes for me, and, calling a sedan-chair, went away again almost immediately.