Mr. Gwynne-Harden (turning): "Mrs. Chichester, I beg your pardon ten thousand times for not seeing you enter. This light is so deceptive, perhaps you thought I was your husband!"
Mrs. Chichester: "George, have you forgotten me?"
Mr. Gwynne-Harden: "My dear Mrs. Chichester, pray let me turn up the lamp, then you will see whom you are addressing. I am Mr. Gwynne-Harden, and if you will pardon my saying so, I don't remember ever having seen your face before. If I have, I have been rude enough to forget the circumstance. Your husband's acquaintance I shall——"
Mrs. Chichester: "What of my husband?"
Mr. Gwynne-Harden: "Only that I shall hope to meet him face to face very soon."
Enter the Colonial Secretary simultaneously with dinner.
10 p.m., the same evening. Scene—Gwynne-Harden's bedroom. He divests himself of his coat and waistcoat, and having done so, discovers a note addressed to himself upon the table. He reads it, and then looks long and fixedly at his own reflection in the glass.
Mr. Gwynne-Harden (tearing the note into a hundred pieces): "Humph! This is certainly the Nineteenth Century—well, I'll sleep on it."