“Dear me! Oh, dear me, what a strange feeling, Mr. Sibley. I feel just as if two men had entered this room.”
Nick was a bit startled.
Sibley was the name on the card he had sent in, and the woman’s immediate remark, in the light of Nick’s disguise, was at least a little peculiar.
“Two men, eh?” said Nick inquiringly. “Well, I am quite alone, madame, I assure you.”
Madame Victoria struck her brow violently with her palm several times, then shook her head, as if bent upon shaking out some of its ideas, and finally cried, with obvious perplexity:
“Well, well, this is quite extraordinary. I never had such a strange feeling. I am impressed exactly as if two men had entered the room.”
“Impressed?”
“Take a chair, sir,” smiled Madame Victoria quite graciously. “You must understand, Mr. Sibley, that I am what I call an impressionist.”
“I hear and know the meaning of the word,” laughed Nick, with curiosity still further piqued, “yet I cannot say that I fully understand.”
Madame Victoria shrugged her fine shoulders, and regarded him archly from under her lifted brows.