“I have only one left,” rejoined Blagdon in a sulky voice, as he reluctantly produced and handed over a note, then before the Baron could thank him he had turned away, and abandoned the Casino for the cool, moonlit gardens. Here he lit a cigar, sat down alone under a clump of Bamboos, and said to himself, he was going to have a good solid think. Blagdon had inherited a certain amount of his father’s shrewdness, and this on rare occasions struggled to the surface, and he beheld his associates by the light of common sense. Connie and her racing debts; the penniless Baron and his borrowings; Lola, her bills and jewellery—a greedy pack, all for themselves! If he were a pauper, not one of them would come near him. Then a beautiful innocent face rose before his mental vision. What a contrast to the painted, powdered, artificial women of his acquaintance! She was the genuine article: her lovely hair and complexion were her own. And yet he was not in love with her, but with an idea, that if he were to marry Letty Glyn, his wife, as Roland said, would be one of the most beautiful women in England. Wherever she was seen, she would make a tremendous sensation. At the Ball, and at the Bonhams’ how she had eclipsed everyone. The resolve sprang up suddenly in his mind, Miss Glyn was the right sort of wife for him. He was a man who desired to possess the best of everything—chiefly in order to excite the envy of others—and as he sat smoking and musing, the image of Letty gathered shape and distinctness. Finally he rose, threw the stump of his cigar among the bushes, and muttered under his breath:
“By Jove, I’ll do it!”
Next morning, with a touch of unusual restraint, Blagdon dissembled his wrath with Lola Corbett, and accepted her playful enquiry as to “why he had never come near her in the Casino?” with commendable indifference.
“The Duke was longing to meet you,” she lied. “We searched for you everywhere. Now he has gone off to Paris. He left by the morning train.”
To which Hugo (also lying) replied with complete sang-froid:
“All right, better luck next time—express my profound regrets when you write!”
Mrs. Corbett surveyed him under her thick black lashes. So Hugo could joke; he had not noticed—what a relief!
“Oh, Hugo,” she resumed, with well-simulated animation, “what do you think, some dreadful person has bought my adorable pet necklace—wasn’t it wicked of them? When I went to pay it my daily visit, it was gone. Who can have bought it?” and she looked at him sharply, but Hugo merely struck a match, and shook his head.
“He probably has it in his pocket the whole time,” the lady assured herself, for she had entered the shop full of anxious enquiries, and received a most particular description of the purchaser, and his name—since Blagdon was a well-known figure, and a generous customer to many of the establishments in the principality.
No later than the next morning it was Mrs. Corbett’s turn to be the victim of a disagreeable surprise. She discovered Hugo in the principal florist’s, in the act of despatching his offering to The Holt. “Miss Glyn,” she read aloud over his shoulder. “Oh, you sly, sly Hugo! If you send these floral tributes to that pretty little schoolgirl, her aunt will snap you up before you know where you are; and she will be a thousand times worse than any mother-in-law—a hateful, managing, dangerous woman.”