“That arrangement was always my idea of what ought to happen—adjoining estates, the old blood mingling with the new. So very suitable! That process has been the salvation of the British aristocracy, hasn’t it? So I—er—felt less scruple in interfering with a less ideal arrangement.”
Here was a chance for him to refer to his wife. He did not avail himself of it. I did not wish to be the one to introduce that subject; if I showed curiosity, he might turn mischievous and put me off with a gibe or a lie.
He had finished his dressing by putting on a dinner jacket. He sat down on the bed—I still occupied the only chair in the room—and lit a cigarette.
“Did you mention at Villa—Villa what did you say it was?”
“San Carlo.”
“Yes, of course! Did you mention at Villa San Carlo that you were coming to see me?”
“No, I didn’t. It’s about the last thing I should think of mentioning there,” I said.
“Quite right. Better not!” he said with an approving nod and, I fancied, an air of relief. “An awkward topic! And a meeting would be more awkward still. I must avoid Mentone, I think—at all events, the fashionable quarter of it!”
At this moment the woman whom I had talked to in the shop knocked at the door, opened it, and ushered in another woman—the bearer of a registered letter. “Aha!” cried Arsenio joyfully, as he took it, hastily signed the receipt, and tore the envelope open. Then he called his landlady back just as she was closing the door: “Pray, Madame, have the kindness to send word to my—er—office that indisposition will prevent my attendance this evening.”
“Ah, Monsieur, for shame!” said she, with the same indulgent affectation of reproof as that which she had bestowed on me.