Pansy disappeared in the closet and emerged polishing a hat that might have come from a museum. Dangerfield, meanwhile, gave a last careful survey of the room. In one corner was a four-poster bed with the faded peacock-blue dressing-gown pendent below a tousled nightcap of gray silk. What furniture there was, and it consisted of a table, a chest of drawers, a bookcase, three chairs, and a massive Breton chest heavily reinforced with iron clasps, was mostly reminiscent of the First Empire which was “the baron’s” hobby, for the walls were covered with engravings of the great Conqueror. Between the windows was the full-length portrait of an actress of the last generation—a striking figure in the costume of Adrienne Lecouvreur, slender and towering, a magnetic brow, ethereal eyes, and, below, the smile of a pagan.
Dangerfield stood before the portrait in long and profound study. Mr. Cornelius, turning from a search through the confusion of his wardrobe for the newest pair of gloves, looked up and saw the reverie into which his friend had fallen.
“Elle était bien belle,” said Dangerfield, catching his eye.
“N’est ce pas?” The aristocratic little figure drew up in a sort of military attention. He glanced at the woman in the frame and then at the room in which they stood. “It was worth it,” he said smiling, with that loyalty unto sentiment that never dies in the soul of a Frenchman.
“What are you two talking about?” said Pansy, pouting.
“My hat and my cane!” claimed “the baron.” Page 316.
“I don’t think it’s at all decent of you to talk French before me.”