Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/322

 "M. Struboff's fame has reached me," said I, sitting own.

Evidently Struboff did not know me; he received the introduction without any show of deference. I was delighted. I should have seen little of the true man had he been aware from the first who I was. Things being as they were, I could flatter him, and he had no motive for flattering me. A mere baron had no effect on him. He resumed the interrupted conversation; he was telling Wetter how he could make money out of music, and then more music out of the money, then more money out of the music, and so on, in an endless chain of music and money, money and music, money, music, money. Wetter sat looking at him with a smile of malicious mockery.

"Happy man!" he cried suddenly. "You love only two things in the world, and you've married both."

Struboff pulled his whisker meditatively.

"Yes, I have done well," he said, and drained his glass. "But hasn't Coralie done well too? Where would she have been but for me?"

"Indeed, my dear Struboff, there's no telling, but I suppose in the arms of somebody else."

"Your own, for example?" growled the husband.

"Observe the usual reticences," said Wetter, with a laugh. "My dear Baron, Struboff mocks my misery by a pretended jealousy. You can reassure him. Did Madame Mansoni ever favour me?"

"I can speak only of what I know," I answered, smiling. "She never favoured you before me."

He caught the ambiguity of my words, and laughed again. Struboff turned toward me with a stare.

"You also knew my wife?" he asked.