He was turning away, as his own business was over; but the young Englishman, who had surrendered his companion, not to say his victim, to the embrace, as it might now almost be called, of their hostess, just checked him with a friendly gesture. “I daresay I shan’t see you again—I’m going away.”
“Good-bye then,” said Waterville. “You return to England?”
“No—I go to Cannes with my mother.”
“You remain at Cannes?”
“Till Christmas very likely.”
The ladies, escorted by Mr. Max, had passed into the hotel, and Waterville presently concluded this exchange. He smiled as he walked away, making it analytically out that poor Sir Arthur had obtained a concession, in the domestic sphere, only at the price of a concession.
The next morning he looked up Littlemore, from whom he had a standing invitation to breakfast, and who, as usual, was smoking a cigar and turning over a dozen newspapers. Littlemore had a large apartment and an accomplished cook; he got up late and wandered about his rooms all the morning, stopping from time to time to look out of his windows, which overhung the Place de la Madeleine. They had not been seated many minutes at breakfast when the visitor mentioned that Mrs. Headway was about to be abandoned by her friend, who was going to Cannes.
But once more he was to feel how little he might ever enlighten this comrade. “He came last night to bid me good-bye,” Littlemore said.
Again Waterville wondered. “Very civil of him, then, all of a sudden.”
“He didn’t come from civility—he came from curiosity. Having dined here he had a pretext for calling.”