“Gentlemen of means don’t go to offices,” he said, waving his envelope. With a smile and a shrug Madame left us.
“Now, Julius, if you’re returning to Villa—Villa—?—yes, San Carlo!—this afternoon, I’ll do myself the pleasure of accompanying you as far as Monte Carlo. That will enable me to see more of you, my friend, and—who knows but that Number 21 may be kind to me to-night?”
“Monte Carlo is very near Mentone,” I remarked.
“True, true! But delicacy of feeling, however desirable and praiseworthy, must not interfere with the serious business of life. We must take our chance, Julius. If any unlucky meeting should occur, I authorize and indeed implore you to cut me dead! They will cut me, I shall cut them, I shall cut you, you will cut me! We shall all cut, and all be cut! And no harm will be done, no blood shed. Voilà, Julius! See how, as they say in French, at the very worst the thing will arrange itself!”
CHAPTER XIII
AN INTRODUCTION
ARSENIO VALDEZ was in the highest of spirits that evening—the effect of the registered letter, no doubt! His fun and gayety brought back, or even bettered, the boy that he had been at Cragsfoot; and he assumed a greater, a more easy, intimacy with me: we had been boy to man then; we were both men now. He was very friendly; whatever his feelings might be about encountering my kindred, evidently he found nothing awkward in meeting me. As we walked up from the station at Monte Carlo, he put his arm in mine and said, “You must dine with me to-night. Yes, yes, it’s no good shaking your head.” He smiled as he added, “You may just as well dine with me as with Lady Dundrannan. But if you feel any scruples, you may consider the dinner as taken out of your fifty, you know!”
It was a polite way of telling me that I had seen the last of my fifty.