"Mr. Val Dartie? How's Mrs. Val Dartie? She's well, I hope." And he saw beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's.
"Prosper Profond—I met you at lunch," added the voice. "How are you?" murmured Val.
"I'm very well," replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain inimitable slowness. "A good devil" Holly had called him. Well! He looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed beard; a sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes, unexpectedly intelligent.
"Here's a gentleman wants to know you—cousin of yours—Mr. George Forsyde."
Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a little lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye; he remembered it dimly from old days when he used to dine with his father at the Iseeum Club.
"I was a racing pal of your father's," George was saying. "How's the stud? Like to buy one of my screws?"
Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen out of breeding. They believed in nothing over here, not even in horses. George Forsyte, Prosper Profond! The devil himself was not more disillusioned than those two.
"Didn't know you were a racing man," he said to Monsieur Profond.
"I'm not. I don' care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don' care for yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends. I've got some lunch, Mr. Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave some; not much—just a small one—in my car."
"Thanks," said Val; "very good of you. I'll come along in about quarter of an hour."