"Most certainly not," Wingate replied. "Come in, please. I'll ring for a cocktail and send the man down into the restaurant to engage a table."
She sank into an easy-chair and looked around her, while Wingate did as he had suggested. The sitting room, filled with trophies of curiously mixed characteristics—a Chinese idol squatting in one corner, some West African weapons above it, two very fine moose heads over a quaintly shaped fireplace, and a row of choice Japanese prints over the bookcase—was a very masculine but eminently habitable apartment. Miss Lane looked around her and approved.
"This is quite the nicest flat in the Court," she declared, "and I've been in so many of them. How did you find time to furnish it like this? I thought that you'd only just arrived from America."
"I come to London often enough to keep this little suite here," he explained. "I had it even through the war. Sometimes I lend it to a friend. I am one of those domestic people," he added with a smile, "who like to have a home of some sort to come to at the end of a journey."
"You're much too nice to live alone," she ventured.
"Well, you see, your sex has decreed that I shall up to the present," he remarked. "Here come the cocktails. I hope that yours won't be too dry. Where will you lunch—the restaurant or the grillroom?"
"The grillroom," she decided, after a moment's reflection. "We can go and sit out in the foyer afterwards and have our coffee."
The cocktails and Wingate's choice of a table were alike approved. Wingate himself, as soon as he had recovered from the bland assurance with which his guest had manufactured her invitation, devoted himself with a somewhat hard light in his eyes to the task of entertaining her. The whole gamut of her attractions was let loose for his benefit. He represented to her the one desirable thing, difficult of attainment, perhaps, but worth the effort. Soft glances and words hinting at tenderness, sighs and half-spoken appeals were all made to serve their obvious purpose. If Wingate's responses were a little artificial, he still made no attempt to hurry through the meal. He seemed perfectly content to consider the attractions which his companion heaped into the shop window of her being. Once she almost amused him, and he found himself for a few seconds contemplating her with some glimmering of the thought which she was so anxious to instil into his brain. After all, a companion like this was soothing, made no demands, filled a pleasant enough place in the broken ways of life, provided one had no other aspirations. And then the thought passed from him,—forever.
They took their coffee and liqueurs in the foyer. Flossie, perfectly satisfied with her companion and her progress with him, chattered gaily away with scarcely a pause, and Wingate, after his first resentment at her coming had passed, found a certain relief in sitting and listening to her equable flow of nonsense. By and by, however, she came very near annoying him.
"You know Lady Dredlinton very well, don't you Mr. Wingate?" she asked, a little abruptly.