"Sleepin’ like an angel, is she? ... Good egg!—though I thought angels never went to bed—flew about singing all the giddy time. Righto, though! I won’t disturb her ladyship.... When she wakes, give her my love...." And Franky entered his dressing-room on cautious tiptoe, lighted a cigarette, rang the bell for his valet, and began to reflect. It was to have been a dinner of eight people—Brayham the host, with Lady Wathe, skinny little vitriol-tongued woman!—a man unknown who was to have sat next Margot; Commander Courtley—ripping good fellow old Courtley! no better sailor walked the quarter-deck of a First-Class Cruiser—damn shame those Admiralty bigwigs denied such a fellow post-rank; and Lady Beauvayse, formerly Miss Sadie Sculpin of New York—pretty American with pots of boodle, married to that ghastly little bounder who’d stepped into the shoes a better man would be wearing if his elder brother (handsome fellow who married an actress, Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity—good old Jollity!) hadn’t got pipped in that scrum with the Boers in 1900-1901. Lessie, Lady Beauvayse, the widder called herself on the posters and programmes. Come down to second-rate parts in Music Hall Revue—gettin’ elderly and stout. Must see red when she happened to spy the present Lord Beauvayse’s pretty peeress in the stalls or boxes.... Wonder why the P.P. made such a pal of Patrine Saxham? Niece of Saxham of Harley Street—handsome as paint, proud as the devil, and an Advanced Thinker—according to Margot. Remembering the gift of the jade tree-frog, Franky involuntarily wrinkled his nose. With Lady Beau and the Saxham girl, there would be a party of seven, counting the man unknown.... Might go on afterwards to the Folies Bergère or the Théâtre Marigny—or perhaps the Jardin de Paris. Why hadn’t Jobling answered his master’s bell? Why had he deputised a waiter to enquire whether his lordship wished his valet? Did he think waiters were paid to do his, Jobling’s, work for him? Or did he, Jobling, suppose he was kept for show? The strenuous stage-whisper in which Franky addressed the recalcitrant Jobling penetrated the door-panels of the adjoining bower, as such whispers usually do. But Margot was really sleeping—the orange-flower water had had a few drops of chloral mingled with it. Milord had never prohibited chloral, as Pauline had pointed out. But unsuspicious Franky, unrigging (as he termed the process), while the tardy Jobling prepared his master’s bath and laid out his master’s "glad rags," plumed himself upon having made a notable advance in the science of wife-government. Even the blameless potion of orange-flower testified to his masculine strength of will. *CHAPTER IX* *SIR THOMAS ENTERTAINS*