“Come to-morrow... I will be at home to no one else...”
“Lucky little girl!” murmured Van Bleit, as he escorted Mrs Lawless from the supper-room. “She enjoys a privilege that many would envy her... You never ask me to visit you...”
She looked at him steadily.
“Perhaps some day I shall do that,” she answered, and smiled at him, a smile so kind and gentle that it set Van Bleit’s heart beating high with expectation, and a hope he did not often dare to indulge.
When he had assisted her into her motor and shut the door upon her, he took the hand she extended to him and raised it to his lips. The car drove off and left him standing in the roadway, looking after it with a complacent smile widening the corners of his sensual mouth. Truly he had a way with women! He had never known any woman who could stand out against him for long.
As he turned and started to walk in the opposite direction from that taken by the car, a figure loomed suddenly out of the darkness and, with a word of greeting, came to a halt in front of him. Van Bleit recognised the sallow, bearded face, the darkness notwithstanding, and instinctively his right hand went to his breast pocket in a manner that brought a smile to the lips of the man who had accosted him. Recovering himself almost immediately, he feigned to be searching for his cigar-case, which eventually he produced, and leisurely proceeded to abstract a cigar therefrom. While thus employed, he replied to the brief salutation of the new-comer with the sarcastic observation:
“Still taking an interest in my movements, Mr Simmonds? I thought your gang had tired of me.”
“You pay yourself a poor compliment, Mr Van Bleit,” was the dry response. “The Colonel seems keener on your society just now than on any other. He’d like to see you. I’ve been hanging about outside this social ballet for some time with the express object of telling you so.”
“A dull amusement,” Van Bleit returned, lighting his cigar, “which you might have spared yourself. Colonel Grey and I have given free vent to our opinions of one another sufficiently often to obviate the necessity of a repetition of our views. Mine have undergone no change—I doubt that his have.”
“I doubt it too,” Simmonds replied. “But this matter he has in mind has no bearing on his personal feelings. He has had a letter recalling him to England.”