What a bath-room! Every muscle relaxed in the steaming hot water. A bottle of fragrant aromatic stuff stood, temptingly handy. He poured it in, and luxuriated. “Colin” must feel a god, with all this at his command, whenever he came in fagged. He must descend on his admiring womenfolk, like a giant refreshed.
A cold shower—and then he blessed heaven he had put a clean shirt in his knapsack.
“Colin’s” ivory-handled razors made shaving a positive pastime.
One moment of indecision, as he caught sight of the dress suit upon the bed. Strange that it should fit. He remembered the beautiful rooms downstairs. He would be decidedly out of the picture in his tweeds. He remembered the full-length mirror at the Mayor’s party. “He should have come as the Black Prince.” How he had enjoyed the remark! His first lesson in vanity. He smiled to think how often he had repeated it to himself, and postured in his shabby little suits. Do people realise how inordinately vain a small boy can be?... Should he? No! That was a fancy-dress masquerade; and so would this be. Whatever anybody said, whatever anybody thought, he must meet Lady Tintagel clad at least in the raiment of his own self-respect and independence. It was not as though he had arrived soaked through and had had to borrow dry things. He brushed his old tweeds vigorously with “Colin’s” silver-backed clothes-brush.
A gong boomed sonorously through the house.
As he walked down the stairs he was still thinking, with dream-like persistence, of the dress difficulty. “I shall say: ‘Excuse this rig. One travels light on a walking tour.’”
In the hall the butler waited.
“This way, sir.”
SCENE IV
THE PRISON BARS DISSOLVE
Lady Tintagel was alone.