"I think it's a great mistake," said John, decidedly. "Suppose I insist upon having your advice?"
"You'd find that dictation bears two meanings in English, to only one of which are you entitled under the terms of our contract."
"Look here, have I done anything to offend you?" he asked, pathetically.
But she would not be moved and held her pencil so conspicuously ready that the author was impaled upon it before he could escape and was soon hard at work dictating his first arrangement of the final scene in a kind of indignant absent-mindedness.
Soon after this John received a note from Sir Percy Mortimer, asking if he could spare time to visit the great actor-manager some evening in the course of the current week. Between nine-thirty and ten was indicated as a suitable time, inasmuch as Sir Percy would then be in his dressing-room gathering the necessary momentum to knock down all the emotional fabric carefully built up in the first two acts by the most cunning of contemporary dramatists. Sir Percy Mortimer, whose name was once Albert Snell, could command anybody, so it ought not to have been remarkable that John rather flustered by the invitation made haste to obey. Yet, he must have been aware of an implied criticism in Miss Hamilton's smile, which flashed across her still deep eyes like a sunny wind, for he murmured, apologetically:
"We poor writers of plays must always wait upon our masters."
He tried to convey that Sir Percy was only a mortal like himself, but he failed somehow to eliminate the deep-rooted respect, almost it might be called awe of the actor that was perceptible under the assumed carelessness of the author.
"You see, it may be that he is anxious to hear some of my plans for the near future," he added.
If Sir Percy Mortimer was impressive in the smoking-room of the Garrick Club as himself, he was dumbfounding in his dressing-room as Lord Claridge, the ambassador, about to enter Princess Thingumabobski's salon and with diplomatic wiles and smiles to settle the future of several couples, incidentally secure for himself the heart and hand of a young heiress. His evening-dress had achieved an immaculation that even Ouida never dreamed of; he wore the Grand Cross of the Victorian Order with as easy an assurance as his father had worn the insignia of a local friendly society in Birmingham; he was the quintessential diplomat of girlish dreams, and it was not surprising that women were ready to remove even their hats to see him perform at matinees.
"Ah, it's very good of you to look me up, my dear fellow. I have just a quarter-of-an-hour. Godfrey!" He turned to address his valet, who might have been a cardinal driven by an ecclesiastical crisis like the spread of Modernism into attendance upon an actor.