True, the flowered robe-de-chambre was there—and vastly becoming, too, with its braided motifs and downy lining of a contrasting hue—but when milor threw off the coverlet with a boyish gesture of impatience, he appeared clad in a daintily frilled day-shirt, breeches of fine faced cloth, whilst a pair of white silk stockings covered his well-shaped calves.
True, the perruque was still absent, but so was the regulation cotton night-cap; instead of these, milor, with that eccentricity peculiar to the entire British race, wore his own hair slightly powdered and tied at the nape of the neck with a wide black silk bow.
Monsieur Achille looked extremely perturbed, and, had his rigorous features ventured to show any expression at all, they would undoubtedly have displayed one of respectful apology to all the high-born gentlemen who witnessed this unedifying spectacle. As it was, the face of Monsieur le valet-de-chambre was set in marble-like rigidity; perhaps only the slightest suspicion of a sigh escaped his lips as he noted milor's complete unconsciousness of the enormity of his offense.
Monsieur le Contrôleur had been in the very midst of an animated argument with Madame de Stainville anent the respective merits of rose red and turquoise blue as a foil to a mellow complexion. This argument he had broken off abruptly by calling for his shoes. No wonder Irène pouted, her pout being singularly becoming.
"Had I been fortunate enough in pleasing your lordship with my poor wit," she said, "you had not been in so great a hurry to rid yourself of my company."
"Nay, madame, permit me to explain," he protested gently. "I pray you try and remember that for the last half-hour I have been the happy yet feeble target for the shafts aimed at me by your beauty and your wit. Now I always feel singularly helpless without my waistcoat and my shoes. I feel like a miserable combatant who, when brought face to face with a powerful enemy, hath been prevented from arming himself for the fray."
"But etiquette——" she protested.
"Etiquette is a jade, madame," he retorted; "shall not you and I turn our backs on her?"
In the meantime M. Achille had, with becoming reverence, taken M. le Contrôleur's coat and waistcoat in his august hands, and stood there holding them with just that awed expression of countenance which a village curé would wear when handling a reliquary.
With that same disregard for ceremony which had characterized him all along, Lord Eglinton rescued his waistcoat from those insistent hands, and, heedless of Achille's look of horror, he slipped it on and buttoned it himself with quick, dexterous fingers, as if he had never done anything else in all his life.