“No. It’s very kind of Lady Phayre, and I feel flattered. But I’ll stick to my own ways. Call me bear, or Goth, or what you like—I have no relish for false positions. You know who I am and all about me, so I don’t mind talking frankly to you.”
The blood rose to his face as he said this, and he held up his head somewhat defiantly. He had barely as yet divested himself of the uncomfortable impression of masquerading in his well fitting clothes, and of incongruity in refined table adjuncts. If these occasioned a worrying feeling of unfamiliarity, the sense of a wrong element in a lady’s drawing-room was still more galling. Gleam was keen enough to perceive these workings of false pride, and he bore Goddard no malice.
“Very well, then,” he said with a smile. “Perhaps you are right in your pig-headed way. I mustn’t keep you from your lunch. Good-bye. I’ll bear Ecclesby in mind.”
He shook hands, waved a salute to one of the men at Goddard’s table, and after exchanging a few words with a party near the door, went away. Goddard returned to his beef, which was getting cold, and, after the meal, retired with his three companions to the smoking-room, where an argument arose that banished Lady Phayre from his mind.
He could have resisted Aloysius Gleam’s persuasion to the crack of doom; but when the stars in their courses began to take up the matter, he was as helpless as Sisera. If he had marched straight out of the club, he possibly might never have spoken to Lady Phayre again. But the stars turned his steps aside to the Central News tape-machine in the strangers’ waiting-room, and there he found himself suddenly face to face with her sitting—a dainty vision—in an arm-chair near the entrance.
Her face brightened as she saw him, and she made a slight forward movement in expectation of his advance. Goddard could do no less than acknowledge these manifestations of friendliness.
“Have you seen Mr. Gleam in the club? They are keeping me such a time waiting.”
“I am afraid he’s gone,” said Goddard, an announcement which the page-boy came up that moment to confirm.
“What a nuisance,” said Lady Phayre. “I want a couple of ladies’ tickets all in a hurry for the House. I have a country girl staying with me, and have only this evening free.”
She looked at Goddard with a little air of concern. Now when Lady Phayre looked at a man like that, she simply rested all her responsibilities upon his shoulders. They became the man’s own personal affairs. Goddard was a man like any other. He reflected instinctively.