In the desire to get free from his button-holing I gave him promises lavish enough to send him off to his other guests with eyes positively glittering with greed.
Unfortunately for me, however, he began to use his influence at once, and while I was hanging about near the entrance, waiting to catch Miralda the moment she arrived, he kept bringing up a number of his friends—mostly titled and all tiresome bores—whom he was also “interesting” in the scheme.
They all said the same thing. Theirs was the only influence which could secure the concessions for me, and they all made it plain about the consideration. I began at length to listen for the phrase and occasionally to anticipate it; and thus in half an hour or so I had promised enough backsheesh to have crippled the scheme ten times over.
One of these old fellows—a marquis or visconte or something of the sort, the biggest bore of the lot anyway—was in possession of me in a corner when Miralda arrived, and for the life of me I couldn’t shake him off. I was worrying how to get away when the marquis came sailing up with another of them in tow, a tall, stiff, hawk-faced, avaricious-looking old man, with a pompous air, and more orders on his breast than I could count.
I groaned and wished the concessions at the bottom of the Tagus, but the next moment had to shut down a smile. It was the Visconte de Linto, Miralda’s stepfather.
The marquis had evidently filled him up with exaggerated stories of my wealth and the riches I had come to pour into the pockets of those who assisted me, and his first tactic was to get rid of the bore in possession. He did this by carrying me off to present me to his wife and daughter.
It was the reverse of such a meeting as I had pictured or desired; for at that moment Miralda was besieged by a crowd of men clamouring for dances. But I could not think of an excuse, and I had barely time to explain that I had met Miralda and her mother in Paris, when the old man pushed his way unceremoniously through the little throng and introduced me, stumbling over my name which he had obviously forgotten, and adding that Miralda must save two or three dances for me.
As he garbled my name she was just taking her dance card back from a man who had scribbled his initials on it and she turned to me with a little impatient movement of the shoulders which I knew well.
Our eyes met, and my fear that she might have forgotten me was dissipated on the instant.