Could he not command the same as soon as he chose?
Mr.Westlake rose from his writing-table and greeted his visitor with a hearty grip of the hand.

He was a man pleasant to look upon; his face, full of intellect, shone with the light of good-will, and the easy carelessness of his attire prepared one for the genial sincerity which marked his way of speaking.

He wore a velvet jacket, a grey waistcoat buttoning up to the throat, grey trousers, fur-bordered slippers; his collar was very deep, and instead of the ordinary shirt-cuffs, his wrists were enclosed in frills.

Long-haired, full-bearded, he had the forehead of an idealist and eyes whose natural expression was an indulgent smile.
A man of letters, he had struggled from obscure poverty to success and ample means; at three-and-thirty he was still hard pressed to make both ends meet, but the ten subsequent years had built for him this pleasant home and banished his long familiar anxieties to the land of nightmare.
'It came just in time,' he was in the habit of saying to those who had his confidence.

'I was at the point where a man begins to turn sour, and I should have soured in earnest.' The process had been most effectually arrested.