meal. I cannot stand the Aunt's dinners. I told Hoskins to telephone that I had swallowed a fish-bone, or a stud, I've forgotten which. I shall know when I get there."
"But what the deuce do you want me to do?" asked Beresford, puzzled to account for his cousin's insistence on his presence.
"Nothing, my dear Richard, just what you are always doing in that inimitable and elegant manner of yours. You will merely act as a foil. The Aunt arranges these things rather badly. She fails to understand that if you like fair men, you like them more by virtue of the presence of a dark man, even if he happens to be an obvious fool."
"Thanks!"
"Not at all," was the reply; "you and I probably are the two most obvious fools west of St. Stephen's."
"I'll go if you wish it, Drew; but I'd rather not. Where Aunt Caroline is concerned I'm rather"
"A homœopathist, exactly. I quite sympathise with you. To-night, however, I shall take it as a kindness if you'll weigh-in," and he rose to indicate that the time of departure had come. "I enjoy your conversation, Richard, I enjoy it intensely; but I cannot afford it at nearly a penny a minute. My taxi is waiting," he explained.
They drove the short distance to Curzon Street in silence.
By the hum of conversation that greeted them as
