Fergusson took up his hat.
“Matravers is not the sort of man one feels like taking a liberty with,” he said. “But I’ll try him.”
“You can let me know to-night at the theatre,” she directed.
CHAPTER IX
Nothing short of a miracle could have made Matravers’ luncheon party a complete success; yet, so far as Berenice was concerned, it could scarcely be looked upon in any other light. Her demeanour towards Adelaide Robinson and Fergusson was such as to give absolutely no opportunity for anything disagreeable! She frankly admitted both her inexperience and her ignorance. Yet, before they left, both Fergusson and his companion began to understand Matravers’ confidence in her. There was something almost magnetically attractive about her personality.
The luncheon was very much what one who knew him would have expected from Matravers—simple, yet served with exceeding elegance. The fruit, the flowers, and the wine had been his own care; and the table had very much the appearance of having been bodily transported from the palace of a noble of some southern land. After the meal was over, they sat out upon the shaded balcony and sipped their coffee and liqueurs,—Fergusson and Berenice wrapt in the discussion of many details of the work which lay before them, whilst Matravers, with an effort which he carefully concealed, talked continually with Adelaide Robinson.
“Is it true,” she asked him, “that you did not intend your play for the stage—that you wrote it from a literary point of view only?”
“In a sense, that is quite true,” he admitted. “I wrote it without any definite idea of offering it to any London manager. My doing so was really only an impulse.”