“Do you mean Bertrand Saton?” his friend asked, with interest.
Vandermere nodded.
“You have heard the fellow’s name, of course,” he said. “For the last month or so one seems to meet him everywhere, and in all sorts of society. The illustrated papers, and even the magazines, have been full of the fellow’s photograph. Women especially seem to regard him as something supernatural. Look at the way they are hanging upon his words now. That is the old Duchess of Ampthill on his left, and the others are all decent enough people of a sort.”
“I gather from your tone,” his friend remarked, “that the young man is not a favorite of yours.”
“He is not,” Vandermere answered. “I don’t understand the breed, and that’s a fact. Apart from that, he has had the confounded impertinence to make love to—to a very charming young lady of my acquaintance.”
“He isn’t particularly good-looking,” the friend remarked—“striking I suppose people would say.”
“He has a sort of unwholesome way of attracting women,” Vandermere remarked. “Look how they all manœuvre to walk out with him.”
Saton was exercising his rights as lion of the party, and leaving early. The Duchess whispered something in his ear, at which he only laughed. Half-a-dozen invitations were showered upon him, which he accepted conditionally.
“I never accept invitations,” he said, “except with a proviso. As a matter of fact, I never can tell exactly when I shall want to work, and when the feeling for work comes, everything else must go. It is not always that one is in the right mood.”