"Yes, just a little," she acknowledged, laughing.
"Well, you needn't. No, honestly you needn't." He laughed too. "I'm shamefully jolly!"
"Then it's all perfect," she said with a sigh of contentment.
Arthur had missed seeing Jephthah's Daughter owing to his mother's death, but since not having seen or read the work is not always a disadvantage when congratulations have to be offered to the author, he expressed his heartily to Mr. Beverley. "Next time it's put up, I shall be there," he added.
"I don't know that it ever will be—and I don't much care if it isn't. It's not bad in its way—you've seen some of the notices, I daresay?—but I'm not sure that it's my real line. I'm having a shot at something rather different. If it succeeds——"
Arthur knew what was coming. "You shan't chuck the office before we've found the dog, anyhow!" he interrupted, laughing. But none the less he admired the sanguine genius. "Only there won't be enough 'lines' to last him out at this rate," he reflected.
At the end—when bride and bridegroom had driven off—Arthur suddenly found his hand seized and violently shaken by old Mr. Sarradet, who was in a state of excited rapture. "The happiest day of my life!" he was saying. "What I've always hoped for! Always, Mr. Lisle, from the beginning!"
He seemed to have no recollection of a certain interview in Bloomsbury Street—an interview abruptly cut short by the arrival of a lady in a barouche. He was growing old, his memory played him tricks. He had found a strong arm to lean on and, rejoicing in it, forgot that it had not always been the thing which he desired.
"Yes, you know a good thing when you see it, Mr. Sarradet," Arthur smilingly told the proud old man. But he did it with an amused consciousness that Mrs. Veltheim, who stood by, eyeing him rather sourly, had a very clear remembrance of past events.
"We'll give 'em a dinner when they come back. You must come, Mr. Lisle. Everybody here must come," old Sarradet went on, and shuffled round the room, asking everyone to come to the dinner. "And now, one more glass of champagne! Oh yes, you must! Yes, you too, Amabel—and you, Mildred! Come, girls, a little drop! Here's a health to the Happy Pair and to Sarradet's Limited!"