"Just wait a minute," said Kilgour. "There's another point in its favour. If you are in a hurry you can clap it on hind-before. Wait a bit and let me illustrate what I mean. Two or three doors up. You know this place? It's my rival Jane. Now, impartially, let's pick these hats to pieces."
But she interrupted his scientific disparagement rather wildly. She had not known how much she liked him, Barnaby's friend who might have talked to her of him if she had dared to loiter just for the sake of hearing his name spoken now and then.... She held out her hand to him wistfully.
"Good-bye, Lord Kilgour," she said hurriedly. "Good-bye!"
He squeezed the little hand kindly, not uttering his surprise till she had vanished from his ken.
"Bolted into the very shop!" he said. "How like a woman. Next time I meet her she'll have one of these monstrosities on her head."
He nodded carelessly at Rackham, to whom Susan had bidden no farewell, and strolled on, hailing his acquaintances, looking in the shops. Turning into Piccadilly he saw a face he knew coming towards him in a hansom, and raised his stick.
"Thought it was you," he said. "You don't look very fit to be out. What do you mean by it? I told your wife you had no business racketing in London."
The hansom had stopped. Barnaby was leaning out, staring at him.
"What did you say?" he asked. There was an incredulous eagerness in his voice.
"Eh?" said Kilgour, struck by his looks, and sorry. "Barnaby, old chap, you ought to be in bed. What's up? You haven't come to town to consult any fancy doctors? No complications, are there? It's generally when a fellow is mending that they crop up."