Aaron frowned a little wearily.
"Captain Brinnen was probably talking quite at random," he remarked. "Lovejoy doesn't seem to me to be the type of man who'd take a serious interest in anything except his own pleasures."
"Quite right," the other agreed shrewdly, "but he might reasonably take an interest in the means of procuring those pleasures. And as to our jewel-collecting friend talking at random, I don't believe it. A man with a face and a character like his doesn't chatter. We'll just spruce up here a bit and follow them right along...."
The two men spent the next two hours in entirely different fashion. Stephen Cresswell made a host of new friends with marvellous facility, flirted with many pretty but unnamed ladies, ate pâté de foie gras sandwiches and drank champagne as though it were his first meal of the day. Aaron, on the other hand, found the customary stiffness of his manner only intensified by the Bohemianism of his fellow-guests. The women, with their laughing eyes, their frankly flirtatious speeches, their general air of good-fellowship and lack of reserve, seemed to him simply intolerable. Every time he thought of Henriette, he hated his surroundings and longed for the solitude which, notwithstanding his efforts, he was only partially able to achieve. To escape the new acquaintances whom the poet was continually bringing up to him, he even played for an hour. Afterwards, when the rooms became more crowded, he escaped into a corner and sat looking on. It was exactly the sort of gathering he had expected—a good many young ladies from the stage with their escorts, a strong element of the betting fraternity, a theatrical agent or two, and a sprinkling of those nameless people, always well dressed, always mysterious, who seem to pass through life so easily without toiling or spinning. He was just deciding that, so far as the object of their visit was concerned, the evening had been wasted, when Pamela Keane came suddenly across the room and sat down by his side.
"I want to talk to you, Mr. Rodd," she said, throwing herself back in a chair and displaying an amazing amount of white silk stocking.
"You are very kind," he murmured.
"Mr. Cresswell tells me that you are a lawyer?"
"That is so," Aaron admitted, a little startled.
"Where are your offices?"
"Seventeen Manchester Street, Adelphi," he replied, "third floor."