“Certainly, my lady. It is in the drawer at the bottom of your ladyship’s wardrobe.”
“Just go and fetch it, will you?”
“Yes, my lady.”
She went out with the movement of a well-drilled actor, leaving me with the uncomfortable impression that the scene had been rehearsed, and that Tarleton could hardly miss coming to the same conclusion. He muttered some vague expression of regret for the trouble he was giving to Lady Violet, and then sat with his lips pursed up in rather ominous fashion, and his eyes fixed on the door.
Henderson reappeared rather too quickly. She carried all the articles that made up the much-talked-of costume, the paste-board armour coated with silver paint, the flowing shirt, even the sandals which the Wardour Street Israelite had deemed appropriate footwear for a desert queen.
Tarleton gave them the barest glance, as they were spread out on the table, and bowed to Violet.
“I have to thank your ladyship.”
He was in the act of rising when the door of the room was thrown open abruptly.
The figure on the threshold presented the appearance of a man just roused from sleep and inclined to resent the interruption of his dreams. He was tall and thin, and seemed to hold himself upright with an effort. His gray hairs straggled over his head in unbrushed disorder, and his clothes hung on him as though they had been dropped where they were in a fit of absence of mind. In spite of these signs of neglect there was an air of dignity about him that left me in no doubt as to his identity.
The Earl of Ledbury advanced into the room, turning a glance of disapproval from Sir Frank Tarleton to myself, and addressed his daughter.