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Then, at as early an hour as I dared to venture on, I walked to Lady Rollinson's house. The servant who answered my summons at the door had been in the habit of skipping on one side at once, and throwing the door open in something of an excess of hospitality.
If Baroness Bonnar had not had the skill to bedevil cleverer men than myself, and men twenty times as experienced, she would never have risen to the position of eminence she occupied. We parted on the understanding that she was to pay no more visits to Lady Rollinson's house, but was to do her loyal best to avoid Violet and her chaperon.
A servant comes up in answer to the ring, and 'er ladyship, from inside 'er bedroom, says, 'Waiter, request that man to leave my room, and see as 'e don't trouble me no more." "Where are Lady Rollinson's rooms?" I asked him, desperately. "They're in this corridor, sir," Hinge answered; "at the far end, numbers 38, 39, and 40."
My mind was a good deal exercised about this matter as I walked swiftly homeward. I thought about it while I was dressing, and as I drove back to Lady Rollinson's that strange rencontre filled my thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. You may judge of my surprise when the baroness appeared as the very last of the invited guests.
Rollinson" was not aware that he was known to his colleagues and the lobby and the Press as "Uncle Billy" until informed thereof by a public print. He stood, one night, on the edge of a laughing group, when a reporter turned to him and said: "The Constellation would like to know Representative Rollinson's opinion of the scandalous story that has just been told."
Lately Henry's been in a mighty serious peck of trouble. Last fall he got married to a girl here in town. Three weeks ago a family named Johnson, the most shiftless in the county, the real low-down white trash sort, living on a truck patch out Rollinson's way, heard that Henry was on a toot in town, spending money freely, and they went after him.
I have been trying to recall everything that happened that day; but I find that I have no memory of anything at all between our talking very brightly and affectionately in the street, and my finding myself alone in Lady Rollinson's drawing-room. There was a bright fire burning there, for the spring days were chilly.
For my own part I was glad that Lady Rollinson's presence made our parting commonplace. I hailed the first hackney carriage I met and drove to my rooms. There I found my passport, and went with it to the Foreign Office, where, through the good offices of an old schoolfellow, I had it vised without loss of time, and then home again to pack.
I hoped that in course of time he would come to see how baseless his suspicions were, but in my joy I could nurse no anger against him. But I was eager to meet my promised wife, and he did not fill my thoughts for more than a passing moment. The count volunteered to accompany me to Lady Rollinson's house.
In all my searchings for the cause of her ladyship's distemper I had not lighted on the thought of Constance Pleyel. I was not so much amazed at it that the name alone could have bowled me over in that way; but Lady Rollinson's idea was that it had gone home instantly to a guilty conscience. "That is enough," she said, "and more than enough."
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