'I'm sure you are,' said Edith; 'it could be no possible satisfaction to you to know that a friend and colleague of yours is either distressingly hard up or painfully penurious.'
They arrived at the house, but there were no lights, and no sign of life. The Mitchells lived here all right, but they were out. The parlourmaid explained. The dinner-party had been Saturday, the night before….
'Strange,' said Bruce, as he got in again. 'I had a curious presentiment that something was going wrong about this dinner at the Mitchells'.'
'What dinner at the Mitchells'? There doesn't seem to be any.'
'Do you know,' Bruce continued his train of thought, 'I felt certain somehow that it would be a failure. Wasn't it odd? I often think I'm a pessimist, and yet look how well I'm taking it. I'm more like a fatalist—sometimes I hardly know what I am.'
'I could tell you what you are,' said Edith, 'but I won't, because now you must take me to the Carlton. We shall get there before it's closed.'
CHAPTER II
Opera Glasses
Whether to behave with some coolness to Mitchell, and be stand-offish, as though it had been all his fault, or to be lavishly apologetic, was the question. Bruce could not make up his mind which attitude to take. In a way, it was all the Mitchells' fault. They oughtn't to have given him a verbal invitation. It was rude, Bohemian, wanting in good form; it showed an absolute and complete ignorance of the most ordinary and elementary usages of society. It was wanting in common courtesy; really, when one came to think about it, it was an insult. On the other hand, technically, Bruce was in the wrong. Having accepted he ought to have turned up on the right night. It may have served them right (as he said), but the fact of going on the wrong night being a lesson to them seemed a little obscure. Edith found it difficult to see the point.
Then he had a more brilliant idea; to go into the office as cheerily as ever, and say to Mitchell pleasantly, 'We're looking forward to next Saturday, old chap,' pretending to have believed from the first that the invitation had been for the Saturday week; and that the dinner was still to come….