He bowed as to a queen, while the young A.D.C., whose enchantress she was at the moment, notwithstanding the fact that she was almost old enough to be his mother, glared ferociously.
"These conceited colonials!" he muttered to himself; "these trading cads, putting on the airs of gentlemen! What presumption of the fellow to speak in that tone to HER!"
"Tony," cried Maude, from the midst of her bags and bundles, which her maid was counting into the hands of a cabman, "you will see me safe home, Tony?"
"Well, really, Maude, I don't see how you can help getting home safely, with your own husband to take care of you," Tony replied, a little irritably (his father, delighted to get his young wife back again, was calling her carriage up). "You don't want me now."
"Tony, you know I always want you. And you might come just for a cup of tea and to see the children. They'll be expecting you."
"I'll see them on Sunday. I must go home and get washed and decent."
"As if you couldn't get washed in our house, where you've got your own rooms, and dozens of suits of clothes lying in your drawers!"
"Oh, I know; but you must excuse me now, really. There'll be letters and all sorts of things at my chambers, waiting for me, and I telegraphed to Jarvis to have my dinner ready."
He detached himself from her clutches, and, when her carriage drove off, called up his hansom and flung himself into it with a sigh of relief. "Thank God, that's over!" he ejaculated, drawing his cigar-case from his pocket. "What fools women are! The more I see of them, the more sick of them I get."
It was great luxury to find himself in his own bachelor home, where the priceless Jarvis had everything in order and ready for him, and where he was his own man, as he could never be elsewhere. He had an iced drink, and read his letters, and glanced at half a dozen newspapers, lolling bare-armed upon a sofa, with a pipe in his mouth and slippered feet in the air; and then he had a bath and elaborately dressed himself, putting a silk coat over his diamond-studded shirt; and Jarvis set the dainty dinner-table, and Danesbury arrived.