"Very well. You will find him in the library. Prim, show the gentleman to the library. If you can persuade him, Professor—" She smiled bitterly. "But then, anybody can persuade him nowadays." She turned to some embroidery as if to dismiss the subject, to show that she was resigned even to hopeless experiments. The very fact that she was plying the needle rather than the social sceptre was gauge of her descent from the heights. As a matter of fact Vanlief found Wentworth amenable enough. Wentworth was reading Marie Corelli. His mind was as empty as that. Nothing could better define his utter lapse from intelligence. He put the book down reluctantly as the Professor came in. He listened without much enthusiasm. A drive? Why not? He hadn't driven much of late, but if it was something that would please the Professor. He remembered, through a mist, that he had known Vanlief when he himself was a boy; his father had often spoken of Vanlief with respect. Nothing further in the way of mental exertion came to him. He followed Vanlief as a dog follows whoso speaks kindly to it.
The conversation between the two, in the brougham, would hardly tend to the general entertainment. It was a thing of shreds and patches. It led nowhither.
The brougham stopped at the door of Orson Vane's house. Nevins let them in, whispering an assuring confidence to the professor. As they reached the door of the dressing-room Vanlief pushed Wentworth ahead of him, and bade him enter. He kept behind him, letting the other's body screen him from the staring mirror.
Wentworth looked at himself. A hand traveled slowly up to his forehead.
"By Jove!" he said, hesitatingly, "I never put the curtain back, after all." And he covered up the mirror. "Curious thing," he went on, with energy vitalizing each word, "what possessed me to come here just now, when I know for a fact that they're playing the Inter-State Golf championships to-day. Dashed if I know why I didn't go!" He walked out, plainly puzzled, clumsily heedless of Vanlief and Nevins, but—himself once more.
Orson Vane, at just that time, was on the links of the Fifeshire Golf Club. He was wearing a little red coat with yellow facings. He was in the act of stooping on a green, to look along the line of his putt, when he got to his feet in a hurried, bewildered way. He threw his putter down on the green. He blushed all over, shaming the tint of his scarlet coat.
"What a foolish game for a grown-up man!" he blurted out, and strode off the grounds.
The bystanders were aghast. They could not find words. Orson Vane, the very prophet of golf, to throw it over in that fashion! It was inexplicable! The episode was simply maddening.
But it was remarked that the decline of golf on this side of the water dated from that very day.