"You live at Highgate?" he said.
Lambert woke up from a reverie he had fallen into with a start.
"Yes, bad luck to it! I've got a house there I can't get rid of, and, talking of old-fashioned things, it's an old-fashioned house. There aren't any electric bells, and if there were you'd as likely as not ring up the ghost. For there's a ghost there, sure enough; she nearly frightened the gizzard out of my butler James."
He leaned back luxuriously in his chair, blowing cigarette rings at the fire, whilst Charles Bevan mentally recalled the vision of "My butler James."
He could not but admit that Lambert carried his poverty exceedingly well, and with a much better grace than that with which many men carry their wealth. The impression that Fanny Lambert had made upon him was not effaced in any way by the impression made upon him by her father. Lambert was not an impossible man. Wildly extravagant he might be, and reckless to the verge of lunacy, but he was a gentleman; and in saying the word "gentleman," my dear sir or madam I do not refer to birth. There lives many a hideous bounder who yet can fling his great-great-great-grandfather at your head, and many a noble-minded gentleman, the present or past existence of whose father is demonstrable only by the logic of physiology.
Lambert went off to his room at twelve, and Mr Bevan passed a broken night. He dreamt of lawyers and sunflowers. He dreamt that he saw old Francis, the village lunatic, waiting at the cross-roads; and when he asked him what he was waiting for, Francis replied that he was waiting to see his (Mr Bevan's) marriage procession go by: a dream which was scarcely a hopeful omen, considering the object of the old man's daily vigil as revealed by Lulu Morgan.
He came down to breakfast late. His hostess did not appear, and Miss Morgan announced that her friend was suffering from tic-douloureux.
"'S far as I can make out, it's like having the grippe in one eye. I've physicked her with Bile Beans and Perry Davis, and I've sent for some Antikamnia. If she's not better by luncheon I'll send for the doctor."
She was not down by luncheon. After that meal, Charles, strolling across the hall to the billiard-room, felt something pluck at his sleeve. It was Miss Morgan.