“You made a veritable sensation Lucio!”
“Did I?” He laughed. “You flatter me Geoffrey.”
“Not at all. Why did you stop so long in front of the daïs?”
“To please my humour!” he returned indifferently—“And partly, to give his Royal Highness the chance of remembering me the next time he sees me.”
“But he seemed to recognise you,”—I said—“Have you met him before?”
His eyes flashed. “Often! But I have never till now [p 192] made a public appearance at St James’s. Court costume and ‘company manners’ make a difference to the looks of most men,—and I doubt,—yes, I very much doubt, whether, even with his reputed excellent memory for faces, the Prince really knew me to-day for what I am!”
[p 193]
XVII
It must have been about a week or ten days after the Prince of Wales’s Levée that I had the strange scene with Sibyl Elton I am about to relate; a scene that left a painful impression on my mind and should have been sufficient to warn me of impending trouble to come had I not been too egotistical to accept any portent that presaged ill to myself. Arriving at Lord Elton’s house one evening, and ascending the stairs to the drawing-room as was now my usual custom, unannounced and without ceremony, I found Diana Chesney there alone and in tears.
“Why, what’s the matter?” I exclaimed in a rallying tone, for I was on very friendly and familiar terms with the little American—“You, of all people in the world, having a private ‘weep’! Has our dear railway papa ‘bust up’?”