"It's no affair of mine, to be sure," he said, "but I rather suspect that your agent was deceiving you--pretending to have accomplished something by way of making you think he was busy."
Ste. Marie was so sure the other would immediately disclaim this that he waited for the word, and gave a little smothered laugh when Captain Stewart said, promptly:
"Oh no! No! That is impossible. I have every confidence in that man. He is one of my best. No, you are mistaken there. I am more disappointed than you could possibly be over the failure of your efforts, but I am quite sure my man thought he had something worth working upon. By-the-way, I have received another rather curious communication--from Ostend this time. I will show you the letter, and you may try your luck there if you would care to." He felt in his pockets and then rose. "I've left the thing in another coat," said he; "if you will allow me, I'll fetch it." But before he had turned away the door-bell rang and he paused. "Ah, well," he said, "another time. Here are some of my guests. They have come earlier than I had expected."
The new arrivals were three very perfectly dressed ladies, one of them an operatic light, who chanced not to be singing that evening and whom Ste. Marie had met before. The two others were rather difficult of classification, but probably, he thought, ornaments of that mysterious border-land between the two worlds which seems to give shelter to so many people against whose characters nothing definite is known, but whose antecedents and connections are not made topics of conversation. The three ladies seemed to be on very friendly terms with Captain Stewart, and greeted him with much noisy delight. One of the unclassified two, when her host, with a glance toward Ste. Marie, addressed her formally, seemed inordinately amused, and laughed for a long time.
Within the next hour ten or a dozen other guests had arrived, and they all seemed to know one another very well, and proceeded to make themselves quite at home. Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflective and not over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he had been asked here to meet them. He was as far from a prig or a snob as any man could very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian parties which were given by his painter or musician friends, but these people seemed to him quite different. The men, with the exception of two eminent opera-singers, who quite obviously had been asked because of their voices, were the sort of men who abound at such places as Ostend and Monte Carlo, and Baden-Baden in the race week. That is not to say that they were ordinary racing touts or the cheaper kind of adventurers (there was a count among them, and a marquis who had recently been divorced by his American wife), but adventurers of a sort they undoubtedly were. There was not one of them, so far as Ste. Marie was aware, who was received anywhere in good society, and he resented very much being compelled to meet them.
Naturally enough, he felt much less concern on the score of the ladies. It is an undoubted and well-nigh universal truth that men who would refuse outright to meet certain classes of their own sex show no reluctance whatever over meeting the women of a corresponding circle--that is, if the women are attractive. It is a depressing fact and inclines one to sighs and head-shakes, and some moral indignation, until the reverse truth is brought to light--namely, that women have identically the same point of view; that, while they cast looks of loathing and horror upon certain of their sisters, they will meet with pleasure any presentable man whatever his crimes or vices.
Ste. Marie was very much puzzled over all this. It seemed to him so unnecessary that a man who really had some footing in the newer society of Paris should choose to surround himself with people of this type; but as he looked on and wondered he became aware of a curious and, in the light of a past conversation, significant fact: all of the people in the room were young; all of them in their varying fashions and degrees very attractive to look upon; all full to overflowing of life and spirits and the determination to have a good time. He saw Captain Stewart moving among them, playing very gracefully his rôle of host, and the man seemed to have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. A miracle of rejuvenation seemed to have come upon him: his eyes were bright and eager, the color was high in his cheeks, and the dry, pedantic tone had gone from his voice. Ste. Marie watched him, and at last he thought he understood. It was half revolting, half pathetic, he thought, but it certainly was interesting to see.
Duval, the great basso of the Opéra, accompanied at the piano by one of the unclassified ladies, was just finishing Mephistopheles' drinking song out of Faust when the door-bell rang.