But at that moment his attention was sharply arrested by a question of Lady Brierley’s.
“Has Dr Escott arrived?” she asked.
The Baron Bunker paused, and in spite of his habitual coolness, the observant colonel noticed that he started ever so slightly.
“He came half an hour ago,” replied Sir Richard. “Ah, here he is.”
As he spoke, a well-remembered figure came into the room, and after a welcome from his hostess, the dinner procession started.
“Whoever is that tall fair man in front?” Dr Escott asked his partner as they crossed the hall.
“Oh, that’s the Baron von Blitzenberg: such an amusing man! We are all in love with him already.”
All through dinner the spurious Baron saw that Dr Escott’s eyes turned continually and curiously on him; yet never for an instant did his spirits droop or his conversation flag. Witty and charming as ever, he discoursed in his comical foreign accent to the amusement of all within hearing, and by the time the gentlemen adjourned to the billiard-room, he had established the reputation of being the most delightful German ever seen. Yet Dr Escott grew more suspicious and bewildered, and Mr Bunker felt that he was being narrowly watched. The skill at billiards of a certain Francis Beveridge used to be the object of the doctor’s unbounded [pg 167] admiration, and it was with the liveliest interest that he watched a game between Colonel Savage and the Baron.
That nobleman knew well the danger of displaying his old dexterity, and to the onlookers it soon became apparent that this branch of his education had been neglected. He not only missed the simplest shots, but seemed very ignorant of the rules of the English game, and in consequence he came in for a little good-natured chaff from Sir Richard and Trelawney. When the colonel’s score stood at 90 and the Baron had scarcely reached 25 Trelawney cried, “I’ll bet you ten to one you don’t win, Baron!”
“What in?” asked the Baron, and the colonel noticed that for the first time be pronounced a w correctly.