He was professedly engaged in writing, but he shaped not word.

He had sat there only a few minutes, when, laying down his pen and pushing back his chair, he rested a hand uneasily on each of the chair-arms and looked on the floor.
Soon he arose and left the room.

His course was along a passage which ended in a central octagonal hall; crossing this he knocked at a door.

A faint, though deep, voice told him to come in.

The room he entered was the library, and it was tenanted by a single person only--his patron the Duke.
During this long interval of years the Duke had lost all his heaviness of build.