He could scarcely be a foreigner--he spoke English with too perfect an accent to be that; and then he knew him, Sir Norman, as if he had been his brother.

In short, there was no use driving himself insane trying to read so unreadable a riddle; and inwardly consigning the mysterious count to Old Nick, he swallowed another glass of sack, and quit thinking about him.
So absorbed had Sir Norman been in his own mournful musings, that he paid no attention whatever to those around him, and had nearly forgotten their very presence, when one of them, with a loud cry, sprang to his feet, and then fell writhing to the floor.

The others, in dismay, gathered abut him, but the next instant fell back with a cry of, "He has the plague!" At that dreaded announcement, half of them scampered off incontinently; and the other half with the landlord at their head, lifted the sufferer whose groans and cries were heart-rendering, and carried him out of the house.

Sir Norman, rather dismayed himself, had risen to his feet, fully aroused from his reverie, and found himself and another individual sole possessors of the premises.

His companion he could not very well make out; for he was sitting, or rather crouching, in a remote and shadowy corner, where nothing was clearly visible but the glare of a pair of fiery eyes.