and they looked with curiosity upon this strange guest who arrived at five minutes to two, limping a little, and holding his left arm in his right hand. One footman on the threshold nearly addressed him, but the words were taken out of his mouth when he saw Lady Mary and her brother—the Honorable Maurice Sotherst—hasten forward to greet him.
Peter Ruff smiled upon them benignly.
“You can take the paper out of my breast-coat pocket,” he said.
The young man’s fingers gripped it. Through Lady Mary’s great thankfulness, however, the sudden fear came shivering.
“You are hurt!” she whispered. “There is blood on your sleeve.”
“Just a graze,” Peter Ruff answered. “Von Hern wasn’t much good at a running target. Back to the ballroom, young man,” he added. “Don’t you see who’s coming?”
The Prime Minister came up the tented way into Montford House. He, too, wondered a little at the man whom he met on his way out, holding his left arm, and looking more as though he had emerged from a street fight than from the Duchess of Montford’s ball. Peter Ruff went home smiling.
THE DEMAND OF THE DOUBLE-FOUR
It was about this time that Peter Ruff found among his letters one morning a highly-scented little missive, addressed to him in a handwriting with which he had once been familiar. He looked at it for several moments before opening it. Even as the paper cutter slid through the top of the envelope, he felt that he had already divined the nature of its contents.
FRIVOLITY THEATRE
March 10th
MY DEAR Mr. RUFF:— I expect that you will be surprised to hear from me again, but I do hope that you will not be annoyed. I know that I behaved very horridly a little time ago, but it was not altogether my fault, and I have been more sorry for it than I can tell you—in fact, John and I have never been the same since, and for the present, at any rate, I have left him and gone on the stage. A lady whom I knew got me a place in the chorus here, and so far I like it immensely.
Won’t you come and meet me after the show to-morrow night, and I will tell you all about it? I should like so much to see you again.
MAUD.
Peter Ruff placed this letter in his breast-coat pocket, and withheld it from his secretary’s notice. He felt, however, very little pleasure at the invitation it conveyed. He hesitated for some time, in fact, whether to accept it or not. Finally, after his modest dinner that evening, he bought a stall for the Frivolity and watched the piece. The girl he had come to see was there in the second row of the chorus, but she certainly did not look her best in the somewhat scant costume required by the part. She showed no signs whatever of any special ability—neither her dancing nor her singing seemed to entitle her to any consideration. She carried herself with a certain amount of self-consciousness, and her eyes seemed perpetually fixed upon the occupants of the stalls. Peter Ruff laid down his glasses with something between a sigh and a groan. There was something to him inexpressibly sad in the sight of his old sweetheart so transformed, so utterly changed from the prim, somewhat genteel young person who had accepted his modest advances with such ladylike diffidence. She seemed, indeed, to have lost those very gifts which had first attracted him. Nevertheless, he kept his appointment at the stage-door.
She was among the first to come out, and she greeted him warmly—almost noisily. With her new profession, she seemed to have adopted a different and certainly more flamboyant deportment.
“I thought you’d come to-night,” she declared, with an arch look. “I felt certain I saw you in the stalls. You are going to take me to supper, aren’t you? Shall we go to the Milan?”
Peter Ruff assented without enthusiasm, handed her into a hansom, and took his place beside her. She wore a very large hat, untidily put on; some of the paint seemed still to be upon her face; her voice, too, seemed to have become louder, and her manner more assertive. There were obvious indications that she no longer considered brandy and soda an unladylike beverage. Peter Ruff was not pleased with himself or proud of his companion.
“You’ll take some wine?” he suggested, after he had ordered, with a few hints from her, a somewhat extensive supper.
“Champagne,” she answered, decidedly. “I’ve got quite used to it, nowadays,” she went on. “I could laugh to think how strange it tasted when you first took me out.”
“Tell me,” Peter Ruff said, “why you have left your husband?”
She laughed.
“Because he was dull and because he was cross,” she answered, “and because the life down at Streatham was simply intolerable. I think it was a little your fault, too,” she said, making eyes; at him across the table. “You gave me a taste of what life was like outside Streatham, and I never forgot it.”
Peter Ruff did not respond—he led the conversation, indeed, into other channels. On the whole, the supper was scarcely a success. Maud, who was growing to consider herself something of a Bohemian, and who certainly looked for some touch of sentiment on the part of her old admirer, was annoyed by the quiet deference with which he treated her. She reproached him with it once, bluntly.
“Say,” she exclaimed, “you don’t seem to want to be so friendly as you did! You haven’t forgiven me yet, I suppose?”
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“It is not that,” he said, “but I think that you have scarcely done a wise thing in leaving your husband. I cannot think that this life on the stage is good for you.”
She laughed, scornfully.
“Well,” she said, “I never thought to have you preaching at me!”
They finished their supper. Maud accepted a cigarette and did her best to change her companion’s mood. She only alluded once more to her husband.
“I don’t see how I could have stayed with him, anyhow,” she said. “You know, he’s been put back—he only gets two pounds fifteen a week now. He couldn’t expect me to live upon that.”
“Put back?” Peter Ruff repeated.
She nodded.
“He seemed to have a lot of bad luck this last year,” she said. “All his cases went wrong, and they don’t think so much of him at Scotland Yard as they did. I am not sure that he hasn’t begun to drink a little.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” Peter Ruff said, gravely.
“I don’t see why you should be,” she answered, bluntly. “He was no friend of yours, nor isn’t now. He may not be so dangerous as he was, but if ever you come across him, you take my tip and be careful. He means to do you a mischief some day, if he can. I am not sure,” she added, “that he doesn’t believe that it was partly your fault about my leaving home.”
“I should be sorry for him to think that,” Peter Ruff answered. “While we are upon the subject, can’t you tell me exactly why your husband dislikes me so?”
“For one thing, because you have been up against him in several of his cases, and have always won.”
“And for the other?”
“Well,” she said, doubtfully, “he seems to connect you in his mind, somehow, with a boy who was in love with me once—Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald—you know who I mean.”
Ruff nodded.
“He still has that in his mind, has he?” he remarked.
“Oh, he’s mad!” she declared. “However, don’t let us talk about him any more.”
The lights were being put out. Peter Ruff paid his bill and they