The problem of an address offered some difficulty, but he boldly declared for “91 Grosvenor Square” in a postscript, believing, and correctly as it happened, that Cynthia shared with Sam Weller a peculiar knowledge of London that rendered one address very like unto another in her eyes.
The failure to meet Vanrenen was the first real drawback he had encountered. It was irritating, at the time, but he gave little heed to it after the first pang of disappointment had passed. Fate, which had proved so kind during six days, did not see fit to warn him that her smiles would now be replaced by frowns. She even lulled him into the belief that Vanrenen’s absence might prove fortunate.
“Perhaps,” he fancied, “I would have rubbed him up the wrong way. He is devoted to his daughter, and he might look on my harmless but unavoidable guile with a prejudiced eye. In any event, I should be compelled to go slow in analyzing Mrs. Devar’s motives, and this pertinacious Marigny seems to have been fairly intimate with him in Paris. Yes, on the whole, it is just as well that I missed him. Cynthia can put matters before him in a better light than is possible to one who is an utter stranger. I must tell her, in my best American, that it is up to her to explain Fitzroy to pap.”
Before leaving the hotel he inquired for Count Edouard Marigny. He drew a blank there. No such name had been registered during the year.
The dinner passed without noteworthy incident. Sir Ashley Stoke condemned the Government, the Marquis of Scarland was more than skeptical as to the prospects of grouse shooting after the deluge in April and May, Lord Fairholme growled at the pernicious effects of the Ground Game Act, and Medenham spoke of these things with his lips but in his heart thought of Cynthia. The four men were in the smoking-room, and the Earl was chaffing his son on account of his inability to play bridge, when Tomkinson entered. He approached Medenham.
“Dale has arrived; he wishes to see your lordship,” he said in a stage whisper.
“Dale!”
The young man sprang to his feet, and his troubled cry brought a smile of wonderment to his brother-in-law’s face.
“By Jove!” said the Marquis, “you couldn’t have jumped quicker if Tomkinson had said ‘the devil’ instead of ‘Dale.’ Who, then, is Dale?”
Medenham hurried from the room without another word. The Earl shook his head.