He took a carriage and drove at once to a fashionable mansion in Baker street.

The servant looked curiously at him and felt half inclined to be insolent to such a visitor.
"Take that card to your master at once," he said in a voice whose authority could not be disputed, and the man went.
His master was lying on a sofa in a luxuriously-furnished room, playing with a lovely girl about four years old, and listening meanwhile to an enthusiastic account of a cricket match that two boys of about twelve and fourteen years were giving him.

He was a strikingly handsome man, in the prime of life, with a thoroughly happy expression.

He took James' card in a careless fashion, listened to the end of his sons' story, and then looked at it.

Instantly his manner changed; he stood up, and said promptly, "Go away now, Miss Margaret, and you also, Angus and David; I have an old friend to see." Then to the servant, "Bring the gentleman here at once." When he heard James' step he went to meet him with open hand; but James said, "Not just yet, Mr.McFarlane; hear what I have to say.