CHAPTER XIV
Betty
“There’s a lady waiting to see you, sir,” Dick’s man servant informed him on his arrival at his apartment one evening when he had been dining at his club, and was putting in a leisurely appearance at his own place after his coffee and cigar.
“A lady?”
“Yes, sir, she has been here since nine. She says it’s not important, but she insisted on waiting.”
“The deuce she did.”
Dick’s quarters were not, strictly speaking, of the bachelor variety. That is, he had a suite in one of the older apartment houses in the fifties, a building that domiciled more families and middle-aged married couples than sprightly young single gentlemen. Dick had fallen heir to the establishment of an elderly uncle, who had furnished the place some time in the nineties and when he grew too decrepit to keep his foothold in New York had retired to the country, 210 leaving Dick in possession. Even if Dick had been a conspicuously rakish young gentleman, which he was not, the traditional dignity of his surroundings would have certainly protected him from incongruous indiscretion in their vicinity.
Betty rose composedly from the pompous red velour couch that ran along the wall under a portrait of a gentleman that looked like a Philip of Spain, but was really Dick’s maternal great grandfather.
“Why, Betty,” Dick said, “this isn’t convenable unless you have a chaperon somewhere concealed. We don’t do things like this.”