The ten days glided swiftly away: and, the day before the great party was to take place, Arthur proposed that we should stroll down to the Hall, in time for afternoon-tea.
“Hadn’t you better go alone?” I suggested. “Surely I shall be very much de trop?”
“Well, it’ll be a kind of experiment,” he said. “Fiat experimentum in corpore vili!” he added, with a graceful bow of mock politeness towards the unfortunate victim. “You see I shall have to bear the sight, to-morrow night, of my lady-love making herself agreable to everybody except the right person, and I shall bear the agony all the better if we have a dress-rehearsal beforehand!”
“My part in the play being, apparently, that of the sample wrong person?”
“Well, no,” Arthur said musingly, as we set forth: “there’s no such part in a regular company. ‘Heavy Father’? That won’t do: that’s filled already. ‘Singing Chambermaid’? Well, the ‘First Lady’ doubles that part. ‘Comic Old Man’? You’re not comic enough. After all, I’m afraid there’s no part for you but the ‘Well-dressed Villain’: only,” with a critical side-glance, “I’m a leetle uncertain about the dress!”
We found Lady Muriel alone, the Earl having gone out to make a call, and at once resumed old terms of intimacy, in the shady arbour where the tea-things seemed to be always waiting. The only novelty in the arrangements (one which Lady Muriel seemed to regard as entirely a matter of course), was that two of the chairs were placed quite close together, side by side. Strange to say, I was not invited to occupy either of them!
“We have been arranging, as we came along, about letter-writing,” Arthur began. “He will want to know how we’re enjoying our Swiss tour: and of course we must pretend we are?”
“Of course,” she meekly assented.
“And the skeleton-in-the-cupboard——” I suggested.
“—is always a difficulty,” she quickly put in, “when you’re traveling about, and when there are no cupboards in the hotels. However, ours is a very portable one; and will be neatly packed, in a nice leather case——”