‘Cur, sneak, coward, villain!’ I hissed when I felt sure I was well out of hearing. ‘Farewell, farewell, Philippa!’
To drown remembrance and regret, I remained in town, striving in a course of what moralists call ‘gaiety’ to forget what I had lost.
How many try the same prescription, and seem rather to like it! I often met my fellow-patients.
One day, on the steps of the Aquarium, I saw the man whom I suspected of not being Philippa’s husband.
‘Who is that cove?’ I asked.
‘Him with the gardenia?’ replied a friend, idiomatically. ‘That is Sir Runan Errand, the amateur showman—him that runs the Live Mermaid, the Missing Link, and Koot Hoomi, the Mahatma of the Mountain.’
‘What kind of man is he?’
‘Just about the usual kind of man you see generally here. Just about as hot as they make them. Mad about having a show of his own; crazed on two-headed calves.’
‘Is he married?’
‘If every lady who calls herself Lady Errand had a legal title to do so, the “Baronetage” would have to be extended to several supplementary volumes.’