It is worth your while to listen.

More especially, as you are paid for it--by the hour." He laughed inside himself, with a hollow sound, and placidly crossed his legs.
"Yes; I came to tell you, firstly, that the present form of government, and, er--any other form which may evolve from it--" "Oh!--proceed, monsieur!" exclaimed the Minister, hastily, while the man in the recess of the window turned and looked over his shoulder at John Turner's profile with a smile, not unkind, on his sphinx-like face.
"-- has the inestimable advantage of my passive approval.

That is why I am here, in fact.

I should be sorry to see it upset." He broke off, and turned laboriously in his chair to look toward the window, as if the gaze of the expressionless eyes there had tickled the back of his neck like a fly.

But by the time the heavy banker had got round, the curtain had fallen again in its original folds.
"-- by a serious Royalist plot," concluded Turner, in his thick, deliberate way.
"So, assuredly, would any patriot or any true friend of France," said the Minister, in his best declamatory manner.
"Um--m.