The book itself dealt with matters rather than men, and with men rather than women; which was characteristic of its author, but rather irritating for the Twins. It had a good deal to say about the under-side of journalism,—graphic and convincing, all this,—and contained a rather technical but absorbingly interesting account of some most exciting financial operations, winding up with a great description of a panic on the Stock Exchange. But there were few light and no tender passages, from which it will be seen that Robin as an author appealed to the male rather than the female intellect.
The Twins, I think, were secretly rather disappointed with the book, less from any particular fondness for the perusal of love-passages than from a truly human desire to note how Robin would have handled them; for it is always interesting to see to what extent our friends will give themselves away when they commit the indiscretion of a book. On this occasion Robin had been exasperatingly self-contained.
But life is full of compensations. There was a dedication. It read:—
THIS BOOK
OWES ITS INCEPTION,
AND IS THEREFORE
DEDICATED,
TO
A CIRCUMSTANCE
OVER
WHOM
I HAVE NO CONTROL.
R. C. F.
Now it is obvious that in nine cases out of ten there is only one circumstance over whom a vigorous young man has no control, and this circumstance wears petticoats. Hitherto I had not seriously connected Robin with the tender passion, and this sudden intimation that the most serious-minded and ambitious of young men is not immune from the same rather startled me.
The female members of my establishment were pleasantly fluttered, though they were concerned less with the lady's existence than with her identity.
"Who do you think she is?" inquired Kitty of me, the first time the subject cropped up between us.
"Don't know, I'm sure," I murmured. I was smoking my post-prandial cigar at the time, at peace with all the world. "Never had the privilege of seeing his visiting-list."
"I wonder who she can be," continued my wife. "He—he hasn't said anything to you, has he, dear?" she inquired, in a tentative voice.
I slowly opened one of my hitherto closed eyes, and cocked it suspiciously at the diplomatist sitting opposite to me. (The Twins and Robin were out at the theatre.) Then, observing that she was stealthily regarding me through her eyelashes—a detestable trick which some women have—I solemnly agitated my eyelid some three or four times and gently closed it again.