Your affectionate cousin,
DEVENE.
“I think that you must go, dear,” said his mother.
“But I don’t wish to,” Rupert answered, with energy. “I hate dinner-parties.”
“Dear, sooner or later you will have to, so why not now? Also Edith would be disappointed.”
“Yes, of course,” said that young lady. “I want to meet Lord Southwick. They say he is the greatest bore in London; quite a curiosity in his own line.”
Then Rupert gave way, and having sent a verbal acceptance by the footman, for the rest of the luncheon was as solemn as the bronze Osiris on the sideboard.
To a man like Rupert that dinner-party was indeed a terrible ordeal. Time had scarcely softened his vivid recollection of that horror of the past, over which he still mourned day by day with the most heart-felt remorse. With a shuddering of the soul he remembered its last dreadful chapter, and now almost he felt as though the book of some new tragedy, in which he must play the leading part, was about to be opened in the fateful company of Lord Devene. Most heartily did he wish himself back in the society of old Bakhita, or even of the Sheik of the Sweet Wells, in the Soudan, or in any other desolate place, so long as it was far from Mayfair. He even regretted having come home; but how could he refuse to do so at his mother’s prayer? Well, it must be faced; escape was impossible, so he set his teeth and prepared to go through with the thing.
“Great Heavens, what a man!” reflected Edith to herself, glancing at his stern countenance, as he helped her from the cab that evening. “One might think he was going to execution, not to dinner.”
The door—how grateful Rupert felt that it was a different door—opened, and there his gratitude faded, for behind the footman stood that identical spare, sombre-looking man who had told him of Clara’s death. He had not changed in the slightest, Rupert would have known him a hundred yards off; and what was more, it seemed to him that the obsequious smile with which the butler greeted him had a special quality, that the sight of him suggested interesting memories to the smiler. What if this man—bah! the very thought of it made him feel cold down the back.