“And not back yet? It’s very late,” said Eustace, looking at his watch.
The time was a quarter to eight. They were dining at half-past.
“I wonder where she is,” he thought.
Then he sat down and gazed at a cartoon which represented a thin man with a preternaturally pale face, legs like sticks, and drooping hands full of toys—himself. Beneath it was written, “His aim is to amuse.”
He turned a page, and read, for the third or fourth time, the following:
“Mr. Eustace Lane.
“Mr. Eustace Bernhard Lane, only son of Mr. Merton Lane, of Carlton House Terrace, was born in London twenty-eight years ago. He is married to one of the belles of the day, and is probably the most envied husband in town.
“Although he is such a noted figure in society, Mr. Eustace Lane has never done any conspicuously good or bad deed. He has neither invented a bicycle nor written a novel, neither lost a seat in Parliament, nor found a mine in South Africa. Careless of elevating the world, he has been content to entertain it, to make it laugh, or to make it wonder. His aim is to amuse, and his whole-souled endeavour to succeed in this ambition has gained him the entire respect of the frivolous. What more could man desire?”
As he finished there came a ring at the hall-door bell.
“Winifred!” he exclaimed, and jumped up with the paper in his hand.