‘Ha! now we’re getting into Politics,’ said Lord Glendover, rising, and thereby giving an impulse which disintegrated Sir Peter’s audience.
Howland-Bowser detached Prince Dwala from the group as it broke up, and drew him aside, with an air of important confidence.
‘If you go to the refreshment room,’ he said, ‘don’t touch the champagne that’s open. Ask the head waiter—the old man with the Newgate fringe; if you mention my name, he’ll know. It’s the ... ah ... ha....’
While he was speaking two figures emerged vividly from the mass, coming towards and past them. Eyes darkened over shoulders looking after them. The straight blue figure of a smooth slender woman, diffusing a soft air of beauty and disdain; and half at her side, half behind her, the Biologist, sly and satisfied, hair and flesh of an even tawny hue, the neck bent forward, equally ready to pounce on a victim or suffer a yoke, balancing his body to a Lyceum stride, clasping an elbow with a hand behind his back, bountifully pouring forth minted words and looking through rims of gold into the woman’s face, as it were round the corner of a door, like some mediæval statesman playing bo-peep with a baby king.
Lady Lillico was pursuing with tired and frightened eyes.
Howland-Bowser cleared his throat and shifted his weight on to one gracefully-curving leg. Lady Lillico had caught them in their passage.
‘Oh, Lady Wyse,’ she said, with a downward inflection of fear, as if she had stepped in a hole, ‘may I introduce Prince Dwala? Prince Dwala: Lady Wyse.’
The blue lady’s eyes traversed Howland-Bowser in the region of the tropics with purely impersonal contempt; he outlined a disclamatory bow, and fingered his tie. The eyes reached Dwala and came to anchor.
‘Oh, you’re the Black Prince,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘the Wild Man from Borneo that everybody talks about?’
Lady Lillico quailed, and vanished through the floor. Howland-Bowser looked round the room, chin up, and walked off with the air of an archdeacon at a school-treat.