"No, dear lady, but I'll tell you what it did look like--it looked like
the author of Vawdrey's admirable works. It looked infinitely more like
him than our friend does himself," I declared.
"Do you mean it was somebody he gets to do them?"
"Yes, while he dines out and disappoints you."
"Disappoints me?" murmured Mrs. Adney artlessly.
"Disappoints _me_--disappoints every one who looks in him for the genius
that created the pages they adore. Where is it in his talk?"
"Ah, last night he was splendid," said the actress.
"He's always splendid, as your morning bath is splendid, or a sirloin of
beef, or the railway service to Brighton. But he's never rare."
"I see what you mean."
"That's what makes you such a comfort to talk to. I've often
wondered--now I know. There are two of them."
"What a delightful idea!"
"One goes out, the other stays at home. One is the genius, the other's
the bourgeois, and it's only the bourgeois whom we personally know. He
talks, he circulates, he's awfully popular, he flirts with you--"
"Whereas it's the genius _you_ are privileged to see!" Mrs. Adney broke
in. "I'm much obliged to you for the distinction."
I laid my hand on her arm. "See him yourself. Try it, test it, go to his
room."
"Go to his room? It wouldn't be proper!" she exclaimed, in the tone of
her best comedy.
"Anything is proper in such an inquiry. If you see him, it settles it."
"How charming--to settle it!" She thought a moment, then she sprang up.
"Do you mean _now_?"
"Whenever you like."
"But suppose I should find the wrong one?" said Blanche Adney, with an
exquisite effect.
"The wrong one? Which one do you call the right?"
"The wrong one for a lady to go and see. Suppose I shouldn't find--the
genius?"
"Oh, I'll look after the other," I replied. Then, as I had happened to
glance about me, I added: "Take care--here comes Lord Mellifont."
"I wish you'd look after _him_," my interlocutress murmured.
"What's the matter with him?"
"That's just what I was going to tell you."
"Tell me now; he's not coming."
Blanche Adney looked a moment. Lord Mellifont, who appeared to have
emerged from the hotel to smoke a meditative cigar, had paused, at a
distance from us, and stood admiring the wonders of the prospect,
discernible even in the dusk. We strolled slowly in another direction,
and she presently said: "My idea is almost as droll as yours."
"I don't call mine droll: it's beautiful."
"There's nothing so beautiful as the droll," Mrs. Adney declared.
"You take a professional view. But I'm all ears." My curiosity was
indeed alive again.
"Well then, my dear friend, if Clare Vawdrey is double (and I'm bound to
say I think that the more of him the better), his lordship there has the
opposite complaint: he isn't even whole."