At breakfast next day Eliphalet found a note on his plate stating that Mrs. Montmorency would be highly honoured if he would favour her with a call in her private boudoir at six that evening. He sent a reply to the effect that he would be pleased to come at the time stated.
Meanwhile Mrs. Montmorency was rehearsing the reconciliation scene from every possible mental angle. She decided to adopt the attitude of a tired woman, sick of the world and its frivolities—a woman who yearned for tenderness and the warmth of a home fire. Contrition there should be in plenty—a hint of many privations, bravely borne, and a show of still amply-filled wells of affection wherefrom a man might fill his bucket with joy.
She ransacked her wardrobe and produced a peignoir constituting a cross between a kimono and a Nottingham lace curtain. This garment, she felt sure, would lay siege to any heart. With her own hands she ironed and prepared it, then laid it aside upon the bed until the hour for dressing should arrive. Naturally, these exertions called for stimulant, and a bottle of brandy was broached with beneficial results. From a hidden recess she unearthed an early portrait of Eliphalet, and this she placed in a frame, occupied by some more recent tenant of her affections, and hung it on the wall in her boudoir. Emma was despatched, not without protest, to procure half-a-dozen arum lilies and half an ounce of cachous. The lilies were bestowed in vases on the mantelshelf, and the cachous fought a losing fight with the brandy-fumes.
All being in readiness, she mounted the stairs, abandoned her corsets, donned the peignoir, and made what little improvements to her face were expedient with creams and powder.
“I can’t imagine what she wants with me,” said Eliphalet, “but” he glanced at his watch—“I soon shall.”
Throwing Mornice a smile, he went down the passage toward the private boudoir. There was no answer to his knock, so he turned the handle and walked inside. Mrs. Montmorency hung over the bannisters above, and watched him enter.
Finding himself alone, his first thought was to retire, but an innate curiosity caused him to look about him first. The lilies attracted his attention, or rather diverted it from the garish vulgarity of the other decorations. His eye was caught by the photographs on the walls, for he recognised several old faces among them. All theatrical lodgings are plastered with portraits of the various actors who have distinguished them with their presence, but there was something in the sequence of the portraits that seemed oddly familiar. Somewhere, on some past wall, he had seen the same picture gallery assembled. Where? He turned and found himself face to face with his own portrait—his portrait as a very young man; written across it in ink, autumnal-brown with time, were the words:
“To my dear Blanche—Eliphalet.”
“Good God!” he whispered.
Then said a voice behind him, speaking in trembling accents: