"Mr. Ward, I am Douglas Gordon.  Yur daughter works for me as a maid twice a week."  He left off the Earl part, not ashamed of his title, but it didn't seem to matter right then. 

When he had come to Whitby no one knew who he was other than he was an artist.  The people that he had met in this area still just thought of him as Mr. Gordon that Scottish artist man that stops by to ask permission to draw them, and sometimes helps them with this or that chore when an extra hand was obviously needed.

So, here he just got to be a normal man.  He liked how it felt then, but right now he wasn't even thinking of art.  He was thinking of Anne and how she was. 

"There was an incident yesterday and I wanted to check on 'er as she had a fright."  He had thought about how to explain it.  He could talk about the illness, but even he wasn't sure how to explain that.  The drinking had made the episode worse, and the opium had tossed it over the cliff into the sinks of hell.

"Is she at 'ome?"