II
Next afternoon he presented himself at Prince Albert’s Place. A landlady who might well have been Mrs. Meadows’s sister took in his card, and after a little buzz of conversation that might have been explained in a dozen sinister ways, he was admitted to the little room, whose lighted windows he had surveyed the night before. Rosie came forward to meet him. Once again, trembling, he took her hand. He even fancied—divine flattery!—that she blushed.
“This is my friend Dr. Ingleby, mother,” she said.
“Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Beaucaire. “Won’t you come and sit over here?”
In the shadow of Mrs. Beaucaire Edwin took his seat. She was a large woman with a husky voice and a big, dissipated face that had once been handsome. If she had any place in the scheme of things it was surely as a foil to the fragile grace of her daughter. Rosie, with an occasional sideways glance, was busy talking to a little man with a blue shaven chin and an immense mobile mouth, who looked like a bookie.
“I suppose you know Mr. Flood?” said Mrs. Beaucaire.
Edwin confessed that he did not.
“The Mr. Flood, you know. Bertie, this is Mr. Ingleby. . . . I beg your pardon, Dr. Ingleby,” and the great comedian shook hands with Edwin and hoped he was well.
The atmosphere of the lodgings was very easy and familiar. Bertie Flood, the Mirth-maker of Three Continents, as the newspapers described him, devoted himself in an easy paternal manner to Rosie. It became apparent to Edwin, overshadowed by the bulk and impressiveness of Mrs. Beaucaire, that whenever Mr. Flood could make an opportunity of handling Rosie, he did so, and also that Rosie did not in any way resent the process. It even seemed to him that she invited Mr. Flood’s attentions.
“We’re very unconventional people, you know, Dr. Ingleby—quite Bohemian,” said Mrs. Beaucaire in a thick voice.