The curtain had admitted a pale youth, with light-colored hair, parted in the middle, who held a pair of gloves furtively in one hand, having plainly just made the discovery that no one else had brought gloves, and being distracted in consequence by a desire to smuggle them into a pocket unperceived.
Victoria greeted him with suspicious cordiality.
“It is too bad of you to come so late, Mr. Jones. I haven’t enjoyed myself a bit.”
“No, Lady Victoria, you mustn’t blame me.” At this point he made an effort to slip the hand which contained the gloves into a tail-pocket, but catching the unconscious eye of the dean fixed, as he supposed, on the offending articles, he drew them out again hastily. “I couldn’t get here sooner. My brougham wasn’t ready.”
“You should have come in a cab.”
“No, Lady Victoria, I am sure you don’t mean that I could have come in a horrid cab. I would as soon walk.”
“Don’t you ride a bicycle?”
“Oh yes, Lady Victoria, of course I ride a bicycle—in the morning, in the Park, you know, but not in the streets. You don’t mean that I could have come here on a bicycle, do you?”
By this time he had dexterously transferred the gloves to his other hand, and was again cautiously feeling his way round to his coat-tails, when a sudden movement of Hammond’s, who had just completed his business with the dean, caused the unfortunate youth to take fright and once more relinquish his half-executed design.
“I am afraid you are not in earnest, Mr. Jones.”