nd I couldn't imagine what was the matter.
Then one day . . ."

He glanced round the table, jumped up and with a word of excuse left the
studio by a small door in a corner. This startled me into the
consciousness that I had been as if I had not existed for these two men.
With his elbows propped on the table Mills had his hands in front of his
face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now and then a puff of
smoke, staring stolidly across the room.

I was moved to ask in a whisper:

"Do you know him well?"

"I don't know what he is driving at," he answered drily. "But as to his
mother she is not as volatile as all that. I suspect it was business.
It may have been a deep plot to get a picture out of Allegre for
somebody. My cousin as likely as not. Or simply to discover what he
had. The Blunts lost all their property and in Paris there are various
ways of making a little money, without actually breaking anything. Not
even the law. And Mrs. Blunt really had a position once--in the days of
the Second Empire--and so. . ."

I listened open-mouthed to these things into which my West-Indian
experiences could not have given me an insight. But Mills checked
himself and ended in a changed tone.

"It's not easy to know what she would be at, either, in any given
instance. For the rest, spotlessly honourable. A delightful,
aristocratic old lady. Only poor."

A bump at the door silenced him and immediately Mr. John Blunt, Captain
of Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity, first-rate cook (as to one dish at
least), and generous host, entered clutching the necks of four more
bottles between the fingers of his hand.

"I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot," he remarked casually. But even
I, with all my innocence, never for a moment believed he had stumbled
accidentally. During the uncorking and the filling up of glasses a
profound silence reigned; but neither of us took it seriously--any more
than his stumble.

"One day," he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of his, "my
mother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get up in the
middle of the night. You must understand my mother's phraseology. It
meant that she would be up and dressed by nine o'clock. This time it was
not Versoy that was commanded for attendance, but I. You may imagine how
delighted I was. . . ."

It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself exclusively to
Mills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills the man