'I was just about to tell you I should not see you again till then, so it all happens most conveniently. He doesn't like it a bit,' thought Miss Montressor, 'but he carries it off pretty well--rather a clever invention, that Brighton business; but it doesn't impose on me.' She remarked aloud simultaneously, with great good humour, 'This is really fortunate, as it turns out; but you might have come, you know, if you hadn't any objection to meeting Mr. Foster--Bryan Duval would have got an invite for you directly.'
'Thanks,' said Mr. Dolby, with perfect gravity; 'such a kindness would have been invaluable under other circumstances; but, as you have just said, I have no fancy for meeting Mr. Foster.'
'That is lucky,' thought Miss Montressor, as Mr. Dolby bade her adieu, 'for I have.'
[CHAPTER IX.]
A DINNER OF CELEBRITIES.
Mr. Duval, punctual to his appointment, pulled up the spanking chestnuts on to their haunches at Miss Montressor's door exactly at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon. They were very spanking chestnuts indeed, and the mail-phaeton glistened with varnish, and on every- place on the harness where it was possible massive pieces of silver-plate had been put. All this was, of course, exaggerated and outré, and quite foreign to Bryan Duval's good taste; but that good taste had been swamped by a long connection with theatricals, and the wondering stares of the public, which he would formerly have shrunk from, he now took delight in, and disdained no method by which they might be attracted.
The phaeton, the horses, and the harness; the huge bearskin rug, with the French viscount's coronet, in red, elaborately displayed in one corner of it, which enwrapped his legs; the very costume of Mr. Duval himself, far more French than English, in its curly-brimmed hat, its brilliant necktie, its small jean boots with glittering tips, and its faultless peau de Suède gloves--all these were merely so many component parts of the general advertisement.
When people stopped in the street and nudged each other, muttering, as he could plainly see by the motion of their lips, 'That's Bryan Duval!' the actor-author inwardly winked, chuckling at the notoriety, and recognising the success of the performance--inwardly only, for he knew what a mistake it would have been to do away with the mysterious interest with which he was regarded by dropping into the comedian or buffoon, and therefore, when any public eye was on him, his face preserved the look of suffering earnestness which it was accustomed to wear on the stage.
When the garden-gate was opened, at the ring of the very elaborate groom who had slid himself into the road before the horses stopped, Miss Montressor appeared at the inner door of the villa; and very pretty and picturesque she looked in her velvet skirt, and her upper dress of fine gray cloth velvet, bound and buttoned, and her small chic bonnet to match.
'How good of you to be so punctual!' she said, with a bright smile.