"But, damn it all, man," I cried angrily, "what have I just been saying? How dare you assume there's anything between them save the ordinary friendship of a distinguished soldier and an English lady?" "If you can only assure me that there is nothing but that ordinary friendship, you will take a weight off my mind and relieve me of a great responsibility." "I can absolutely assure you," I cried hotly, "that by no remote possibility can there be anything else between Lady Auriol Dayne and Petit Patou." He thrust out both his hands and fervently grasped the one I instinctively put forward. "Thank you, thank you, my dear Hylton. That's exactly what I wanted to know. _Au revoir_. I think we said ten o'clock." He marched away briskly. With his white hair gleaming between his little black felt hat cocked at an angle and the collar of his flapping old-fashioned opera-cloak, he looked like some weird bird of the night. I entered the hotel feeling the hot and cold of the man who has said a damnable thing. Through the action of what kinky cell of the brain I had called the dear gallant fellow "Petit Patou," instead of "Lackaday," I was unable to conjecture. I hated myself. I could have kicked myself. I wallowed in the unreason of a man vainly seeking to justify himself. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to see Horatio Bakkus again. I went to bed loathing the idea of our appointment. Chapter XXII Lady Auriol, myself and the car met punctually at the hotel door at ten o'clock. There was also a _chasseur_ with Lady Auriol's dust-coat and binoculars, and a _concierge_ with advice. We waited for Bakkus. Auriol, suddenly bethinking herself of plain chocolate, to the consumption of which she was addicted on the grounds of its hunger-satisfying qualities, although I guaranteed her a hearty midday meal on the occasion of the present adventure, we went down the street to the _Marquise de Sévigné_ shop and bought some. This took time, because she lingered over several varieties devastating to the appetite. I paid gladly. If we all had the same ideas as to the employment of a happy day, it would be a dull world. We went back to the car. Still no Bakkus. We waited again. I railed at the artistic temperament. Pure, sheer bone idleness, said I. "But what can he be doing?" asked Auriol. I, who had received through Lackaday many lights on Bakkus's character, was at no loss to reply. "Doing? Why, snoring. He'll awake at midday, stroll round here and expect to find us smiling on the pavement. We give him five more minutes." At the end of the five minutes I sent the _concierge_ off for a guide-book; much more accurate, I declared, than Bakkus was likely to be, and at half-past ten by my watch we started. Although I railed at the sloth of Bakkus, I rejoiced in his absence. My over-night impression had not been dissipated by slumber. "I'm not sorry," said I, as we drove along. "Our friend is rather too much of a professed conversationalist."