“Before you came,” she said, “he had never known a failure. Do you think that he is a man likely to forgive?”
“I do not,” De Grost answered grimly. “It is a battle, of course, a battle all the time. Yet, Violet, between you and me, if Bernadine were to go, half the savor of life for me would depart with him.”
Then there came a curious and wholly unexpected interruption. A man in dark, plain clothes, still wearing his overcoat, and carrying a bowler hat, had been standing in the entrance of the restaurant for a moment or two, looking around the room as though in search of some one. At last he caught the eye of the Baron de Grost and came quickly toward him.
“Charles,” the Baron remarked, raising his eyebrows. “I wonder what he wants.”
A sudden cloud had fallen upon their little feast. Violet watched the coming of her husband’s servant, and the reading of the note which he presented to his master, with an anxiety which she could not wholly conceal. The Baron read the note twice, scrutinizing a certain part of it closely with the aid of the monocle which he seldom used. Then he folded it up and placed it in the breast pocket of his coat.
“At what hour did you receive this, Charles?” he asked.
“A messenger brought it in a taxicab about ten minutes ago, sir,” the man replied. “He said that it was of the utmost importance, and that I had better try and find you.”
“A district messenger?”
“A man in ordinary clothes,” Charles answered. “He looked like a porter in a warehouse, or something of that sort. I forgot to say that you were rung up on the telephone three times previously by Mr. Greening.”
The Baron nodded.