Page:The Eyes of Max Carrados.pdf/37

Rh to leave that the tangent of the visit touched the circle of the Virginiola.

"I am due at Gurnard's at about three-thirty," remarked Marrable, glancing at a Louis XVI. ormolu clock for which he had marked off a certain musical comedy countess at two hundred and fifty guineas. "Your way at all?"

"Gurnard & Lane's—the auctioneers?"

"Yes. They have a book sale on this afternoon."

"I hope I haven't been keeping you," apologised Carrados.

"Oh, not at all. There is nothing I want among the earlier lots." He picked up a catalogue from a satinwood desk in which Mademoiselle Mars had once kept her play-bills and glanced down the pages. "No. 191 is the first I have marked: An Account of the Newly Discovered Islands of Sir George Sommers, called 'Virginiola.' You aren't a competitor, by the way?"

"No," replied Carrados; "but if you don't mind I should like to go with you."

Marrable looked at him with slightly suspicious curiosity.

"You'd find it uncommonly dull, surely, seeing nothing," he remarked.

"I generally contrive to extract some interest from what is going on," said Carrados modestly. "And as I have never yet been at a book sale"

"Oh, come, by all means," interposed the other. "I shall be very glad of your company. Only I was surprised for the moment at the idea. I should warn you, however, that it isn't anything great in the way of a dispersal—no Caxtons or first-folio Shakespeares. Consequently there will be an absence of ducal bibliophiles