Sheridan pushed him into his bedroom.
“Make your toilet, my boy,” he told him good-naturedly. “We will wait,”—and Gordon resigned himself to the ministrations of Fletcher and the comfort of hot water and fine linen.
When he came back to find his visitors smoking, he had thrust all outward agitation under the surface. He was dressed in elegance, and a carnation was in the buttonhole of his white great-coat. There was less of melancholy curve to the finely-wrought lips, more of slumbrous fire in the gray-blue eyes.
“There’s a soberer for you.” Moore indicated the pile of sealed missives and pasteboards. “You’ll certainly need a secretary.”
Gordon’s eye caught the Melbourne crest. He picked out the note from the rest hastily, with a vision flitting through his mind of a clear-eyed statuesque girl. While he was reading there was a double knock at the door which Fletcher answered.
A splendid figure stood on the threshold, arrayed as Solomon was not in all his glory, and the figure pushed his way in, with gorgeous disregard of the valet.
“Is his lordship in yet?” he simpered. “Eh? Stap my vitals, say it’s Captain Brummell—George Brummell—and be quick about it. Ah!” he continued, raising his glass to his eye, as he distinguished the group, “there he is now, and old Sherry, too. I am your lordship’s most obedient! I’ve been here twice this afternoon. You must come to Watier’s Club with me, sir—I’ll be sworn, I must be the one to introduce you! You will all favor us, gentlemen, of course, as my guests. My chariot is at the door!”
“I thank you, Captain,” Gordon answered, as he folded the note of invitation he had been reading and put it in his pocket, “but I cannot give myself the pleasure this afternoon. Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Moore will doubtless be charmed. I am promised within the hour to dinner—at Lady Melbourne’s.”
CHAPTER X
THE PRICE OF THE BAUBLE
Beau Brummell, from his seat in the bow-window, bowed with empressement as Gordon alighted from his carriage and ascended the steps of White’s Club from an early dinner at Holland House.