“Many thanks for meeting me in this little matter, Mr Jackson. Well, for the present, good-bye.” And poor Guy Rossett, fondly thinking that he had laid the ghosts of the past, emerged from Jackson’s room to be confronted with Violet Hargrave, seated in one of those luxurious easy chairs which the hospitable foreigner provided for his waiting clients.
He put the best face he could on the situation, and advanced with outstretched hand.
“An unexpected pleasure, Mrs Hargrave,” he cried in a very uncertain voice. A more embarrassed specimen of a budding diplomatist could not have been observed.
The pretty widow ignored the outstretched hand. She looked at him steadily, and the blue eyes were no longer soft and limpid, but hard as steel.
“I think,” she said in a voice that was as hard as her glance, “you are indulging in the language of diplomacy, which is usually used to disguise one’s real thoughts.”
Rossett turned red, and began, in his agitation, to stammer forth lame and foolish excuses.
“I have been awfully busy lately, you know, not had time for anything in the social line. The truth is, Mrs Hargrave, I have just woke up to the fact that I have been wasting a good part of my life. I am really going in now for work, hard work, and ambition.”
She swept him with a contemptuous glance.
“Is this supposed to be an apology for your despicable conduct as regards myself?”
“As you please to take it, Mrs Hargrave.” Knowing he was utterly in the wrong, he took refuge in a sort of sullen dignity.