I sat silent; if the truth must be told, I was rather abashed. On reflection—and on a reflection prompted by Monkey Valdez!—what I had been proposing to do seemed not quite the square thing. Anyhow, a doubtful case; it is a good working rule not to do things that you would not like to be found out in.
“Then I suppose I oughtn’t to have come to see you either?”
“Oh, I don’t matter so much. Nina has no animosity against me.” His eyes twinkled. “Still, don’t mention it, there’s a good fellow. You see, she’d question you, and I am rather down on my luck. Lucinda and I both are. I daresay you’ll understand that we shouldn’t care for that to get round through Nina to Waldo?”
That feeling seemed natural and intelligible enough. The contrast between splendor and—well—something like squalor—in view of the past they would hardly wish Lady Dundrannan and her husband to be in a position to draw it.
“Oh, well, what’s done’s done; but you and I had perhaps better not meet any more just for the present.”
“I’ve roused your scruples?” he laughed. “I, the moralist! Just as you like, old fellow. I’m glad you happened to hit on a lucky night—hope you’ve enjoyed the dinner?”
“Immensely, thanks. But I’d better be getting back now, I think.”
“Well, it’s about time I got to business.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the Casino. “Let me pay, and we’ll be off.”
In another five minutes we should have parted company, and my indiscretion in visiting Arsenio Valdez from Villa San Carlo would have had no consequences. But things were not fated to end that way. While my host was paying the bill—he put down very openly, perhaps with some slight flourish, a note for five hundred francs—I felt a hand laid on my shoulder. I looked up, and saw Godfrey Frost.
“Ah!” said he, with a laugh, “you’re not the only truant! I got a little bored myself, and thought I’d run over here and have a flutter. We’ll go back together, shall we? May I sit down at your table? I’m late, but they say they can give me something cold.”
Arsenio’s eyes were upon me; with his infernal quickness the fellow must have detected an embarrassment on my face; his own puckered into a malicious smile. He settled back into the chair which he had been about to vacate—and waited.