'There's no mistaking you, old chap,' he said. 'I'm just back from America. They think a lot of you over there since your conquest of London.'
'You haven't met my wife,' said Charles, with his mouth full. 'What a splendid place this is! Chicken, this is Freeland Moore. We were together in the old days with the Old Man.'
'I was with him when he died,' said Freeland, 'died in harness. There's no one like him now.'
'Who?' asked Clara, alive at once to even the memory of a great personality.
'Henry Irving. He was a prince, and kept royalty alive in England. It seems a long time ago now. Won't you come over and join us for coffee, when you have finished? I am with Miss Julia Wainwright; she's with us at the Imperium. Not for long, I'm afraid. It's a wash-out.'
'Ah!' said Charles, remembering Sir Henry's depressed glance round the theatre, and he saw himself restoring splendour and success to the Imperium.
After dinner they went over to Mr Moore's table, and Clara, shaking hands with Miss Wainwright, warmed to the large, generous creature with her expansive bosom, her drooping figure, her tinted face and hair and ludicrously long soft eyes. There was room in Miss Wainwright for a dozen Claras. She looked sentimentally and with amazement spreading in ripples over her big face at the girl's wedding-ring and said,—
'So pleased to meet you, child. I made Freeland go over and fetch you.... You're not on the stage, are you?'
'No,' replied Clara, 'but I'm going to be.'
'It is not what it was,' resumed Miss Wainwright, sipping her crème de menthe.' The Wainwrights have always been in the profession, but I'm sending my boy to a public-school.... You're not English, are you?'