For all that, he was glad when a voice in the little office announced a visitor.
It was a clear, peremptory voice, short, sharp, incisive, and decisive.
The clerk called Bolton heard it in the lobby, and scuttled into the street with a rapidity that contrasted drolly enough with the composure and slowness with which he had been brushing his hair and titivating his nascent whiskers.
A tall, stiff military figure literally marched into the middle of the office, and there stood like a sentinel.
Mr.Bartley could hardly believe his senses.
"Colonel Clifford!" said he, roughly.
"You are surprised to see me here ?" "Of course I am.

May I ask what brings you ?" "That which composes all quarrels and squares all accounts--Death." Colonel Clifford said this solemnly, and with less asperity.

He added, with a glance at Monckton, "This is a very private matter." Bartley took the hint, and asked Monckton to retire into the inner office.
As soon as he and Colonel Clifford were alone, that warrior, still standing straight as a dart, delivered himself of certain short sentences, each of which seemed to be propelled, or indeed jerked out of him, by some foreign power seated in his breast.
"My sister, your injured wife, is no more." "Dead! This is very sudden.

I am very, very sorry.

I--" Colonel Clifford looked the word "Humbug," and continued to expel short sentences.
"On her death-bed she made me promise to give you my hand.