The room contained two people: a man whom Stephen had never seen before and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. The man he had never seen before was seated at a little table in front of the window. Presumably he ought to have been unpacking his things and setting his room in order, but he had abandoned this task and was presently engaged in reading a book. He broke off every now and then to look things up in two or three other volumes that lay on the table; to mutter excitedly to himself; and to dash down a note or two in an ink-splashed little book.

Meanwhile the gentleman with the thistle-down hair sat in an arm-chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, directing at the other man a look of such extreme malevolence and irritation as made Stephen fear for the man’s life. Yet the moment the gentleman with the thistle-down hair beheld Stephen, he became all delight, all affability. “Ah, there you are!” he cried. “How noble you look in your kingly accoutrements!”

There happened to be a large mirror standing opposite the door. For the first time Stephen saw himself with the crown, sceptre and orb. He looked every inch a king. He turned to look at the man at the table to discover how he bore with the sudden appearance of a black man in a crown.

“Oh! Do not concern yourself about him!” said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. “He can neither see nor hear us. He has no more talent than the other one. Look!” He screwed up a piece of paper and threw it energetically at the man’s head. The man did not flinch or look up or appear to know any thing about it.

“The other one, sir?” said Stephen. “What do you mean?”

“That is the younger magician. The one lately arrived in London.”

“Is it indeed? I have heard of him, of course. Sir Walter thinks highly of him. But I confess I have forgotten his name.”

“Oh! Who cares what his name is! What matters is that he is just as stupid as the other one and very near as ugly.”

“What?” said the magician, suddenly. He turned away from his book and looked around the room with a slightly suspicious air. “Jeremy!” he called out very loudly.

A servant put his head around the door, but did not trouble himself so far as to come into the room. “Sir?” he said.

Stephen’s eyes opened very wide at this lazy behaviour –it was a thing he would never have allowed in Harley-street. He made a point of staring very coldly at the man to shew him what he thought of him before he remembered that the man could not see him.

“These London houses are shockingly built,” said the magician. “I can hear the people in the next house.”