“At the White Club you’ll find all the daily papers.”
“And will one of your cards be enough to admit me?”
“I haven’t a card here, but——” Van Arlen looked round, and his eye fell on the card of one of his subordinates. “This will do just as well.”
“Merci!” said Prigson, with a just perceptible smile, and left him.
When Van Arlen returned from the Minister’s private room, he sent to ask the functionary whose card he had given to Prigson to come to him, and, while waiting, wrote a note to his wife, informing her of that gentleman’s arrival.
Before the note had reached its destination, however, the person in question had already appeared on the scene. He had been shown into the salon, where, after sending up his name, he paced up and down for about half-an-hour, vainly seeking for diversion in the four framed engravings representing the divisions of the day, typified by English ladies in the large bonnets and short waists of a fashion forty years old. The alabaster clock, with gilt ornaments, was not going—it had not gone for twenty years,—and the vases were as clumsy in form as monstrous in colouring.
“Everything dates from the year twenty,” muttered Prigson, after a hasty glance at one article and another, “and these things never break! The whole house and furniture is of the year twenty—the girls too. Is none of them going to appear? Hortense surely doesn’t require to make such a toilette.”
He pulled the bell. It had given no sound for the last ten years;—but, as it happened, the maid was just passing the door.
“Look here, my girl—you seem smart enough—just run upstairs and tell your mistress I have only ten minutes to spare, and I have to go out of town again directly.”
“Thank Heaven!” thought Mevrouw, when the maid came up with the message, “then he won’t stay to dinner!” and in another moment she was downstairs, endeavouring, by extra cordiality, to remove the impression which the long waiting must have produced on Prigson.