"Well—and then a little affair of business—eh?"
Lilla laughed at the grimace her husband made.
Boyne left her at once, and ascending to his bedroom, shaved, exchanged his clothes for a smart evening suit, and carefully brushed his hair, until, when he descended, he presented the ideal man-about-town whose evening clothes were well worn and who wore his soft-fronted shirt as one accustomed to it every night. The man unused to the claw-hammer coat is always to be noticed in a crowd, just as is the woman who, putting on an evening frock occasionally, hitches it up on the shoulder and is palpably uncomfortable in it.
Bernard Boyne wore his clothes, whether the dusty suit of the Hammersmith insurance agent or the smart evening clothes in which he pursued his nocturnal peregrinations in the West End, with equal grace and ease.
When he rejoined his wife in the pretty drawing-room he presented a very different figure from the man who had sat in that ugly white cloak with the slits for eyes in that dingy, creeper-covered house in Hammersmith.
He rang the bell, and, ordering a taxi, lit a cigarette, and awaited it.
Lilla was splendidly dressed in a gown of navy blue and gold brocade, cut very low, with shoes and stockings to match. In her hair was a long osprey which well matched the gorgeous gown, the latest creation of Petticoat Lane—the writer begs pardon of his lady readers for such irreverent mention of Dover Street, Piccadilly, that street in which the latest fashions of feminine frippery have their birth, and to which the mere man sends his cheques in consequence of recurring crazes.
When together in the taxi, Lilla said:
"Now be extremely careful. This Scotch woman is very canny. Remember that! If we made a slip it would land us all in—well, at a very dead end."
"Don't be anxious, Lilla. I never like you when you grow anxious, because anxiety always brings us bad luck. And we don't want that to-night—do we? Eat your dinner and think of nothing—only of the revue at the Hippodrome. Leave Ena and myself to it. Don't bother—or you may arouse suspicion."