"My opinion is," said Lethal, holding out his crooked forefinger like a claw, "that this soi-disant duke—what the deuse is his name?"
"Rosecouleur," interposed Adonaïs, in a tone of society.
"Right,—Couleur de Rose is an impostor,—an impostor, a sharper.
Everything tends that way. What an utter sell it would be!"
"You were with us at the picture scene?" murmured Adonaïs.
"Yes. Dalton looked wretchedly cut up, when that devil of a valet, who must be an accomplice, scraped the new paint off. The picture must have been got up in New York by Dalton and the Denslows."
"Perhaps the Duke, too, was got up in New York, on the same principle," suggested Adonaïs. "Such things are possible. Society is intrinsically rotten, you know, and Dalton"——
"Is a fellow of considerable talent," sneered Lethal,—"but has enemies, who may have planned a duke."
Adonaïs coughed in his cravat, and hinted,—"How would it do to call him
'Barnum Dalton'?"
Adonaïs appeared shocked at himself, and swallowed a minim of wine to cleanse his vocal apparatus from the stain of so coarse an illustration.
"Do you hear those creatures?" whispered Dalton. "They are arranging scandalous paragraphs for the 'Illustration.'"