‘Why, Lord!’ he said once in the course of that afternoon’s talk, ‘when you were in short frocks, and I was over head and ears in love with you——’
The Baroness snatched a fan which girdled her, and tapped him with it reprovingly.
‘Well,’ he said, twinkling, ‘when all is said and done, habit is the conqueror. I got into that habit when you were a baby: twenty years ago, I’ll swear, though it’s not legitimate, I know, to guess a lady’s age. I’ve found a new habit since—a Satanic habit—of going to and fro about the earth, and roaming up and down on it, but I have never forgotten the old one.’
The Baroness laughed and made fun of this proclamation, which was accompanied by certain old-fashioned bows and flourishes of deportment.
‘But now,’ she said, ‘I must really run away and look after my patient, and must leave you, gentlemen, to console each other for my loss. I left Mrs. Diedrich asleep, and could just afford to snatch half an hour for so old a friend as you, Colonel If you care to come back and have tea with me at six, I shall be glad to meet you, if I may dare run away again. But if I should be compelled to send down my excuses, you will understand.’
She had already started a movement towards the hotel, and the two men sauntered along with her, one on either side. She left them in the flower-perfumed dimness of the shaded hall, and the whole business of the afternoon had by this time so explained and reconciled itself to Paul’s mind that he would have been a brute to fret about it longer.
‘I say,’ said the Colonel, ‘I have been for three years outside civilization, and I should like a John Collins. I came here last night by the Messagerie Maritime. They are good people, and they cook as well as anybody can be expected to cook outside the United States, but their ideas of drink are curiously simple. Can you be my guide, Mr. Armstrong?’
‘Need I guide you farther?’ asked Paul ‘I should fancy that your materials are to be found here in an absurd plenty, and if you have a skilful hand——’
‘Sir,’ said the Colonel, with a burlesque flourish, interrupting him, ‘there is not a man from Marble Head to the Golden Gate who can make a John Collins to compare with mine.’
Paul knew the house, and led his new acquaintance to a shady veranda where a polyglot waiter chipped his ice to his fancy, found him lemon, pounded sugar, fresh mint, square-faced Hollands, and syphon-water, and left the Colonel compounding in a high state of content.