He laughed, hung up, and went his way. Only the florists at the great hotels remained open for business. At one of these he was properly robbed, but the flowers that he sent to Rosalind were magnificent. He joined half a dozen men of his own world at the Province Club and made one of a group at dinner. Conversation was the sort of big-town-small-talk passing current as conversation at the majority of such clubs--Wall Street tattle, social prattle, golfing week-ends, summer plans. Somebody--Wilkes Bruce--remarked to Annan that his aunt was in town. The prospect of seeing her cheered him, stirring up that ever latent perverse humour of his, with the prospect of an acrimonious exchange of civilities. Not that Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt ever received her nephew willingly; but twice every year matters concerning the estate had to be discussed with him personally. So Annan knew that before she took herself elsewhere a summons to the presence would arrive for him at No. 3 Governor’s Place. She possessed a horrible house in town--a caricature of a French château--closed most of the year. In the depths of that dim and over-upholstered stronghold these semi-annual audiences were held. They resembled courts of justice, his aunt sitting, and he the malefactor on parole, reporting at intervals according to law. And he looked forward to these conferences with malicious amusement, if his aunt did not. After dinner he played cowboy pool with Archie Mallison and Wilkes Bruce, winning as usual. For he did everything with the same facility that characterised his easy speech and manners--accurate without effort, naturally a technician, always graceful. But a little of his own caste went a long way with Annan. Conversation at The Province, as well as at The Patroons, bored him very soon. So, having neatly disposed of Bruce and Mallison, he retired to the library--the only place he cared about in any club except when some old foozle went to sleep there and snored. For an hour he dawdled among the great masters of written English, always curious, always charmed, unconsciously aware of a kinship between these immortals and himself. For perhaps this young man was not unrelated, distantly, to that noble fellowship, though the subtle possibility had never entered his mind. So he dallied among pages printed when writing was a fine art--and printing and binding, too; and about midnight he went below, put on his hat, and betook himself to _The Looking Glass_. In the amusement district the tide of gaiety was still ebbing with the usual back-wash toward cabaret and midnight show. _The Looking Glass_ was dark and all doors closed, but there were many cars in waiting and a group of gossiping chauffeurs around the private entrance, where a gilded lamp burned. Through this entrance he sauntered; a lift shot him upward; he disembarked amid a glare of light and a jolly tumult of string-music and laughter.