Brief pause prefaced a bid designed to squelch him completely: 

“Ten thousand!”

In a fatigued voice he uttered:  “One hundred more.”

“Fifteen—!”

This time Lanyard contented himself with nodding to the auctioneer; and the lips of the latter had barely parted to parrot the bid when Victor sprang to his feet, his features working, his limbs shaking so that the legs of the chair beside him, whose back he seized, chattered on the floor, while the high-pitched voice broke into a screech: 

“Twenty!”

And Lanyard said:  “And one.”

“Twenty thousand one hundred guineas!” chanted the auctioneer.  “Are there any more bids?  You, sir—?” He aimed a respectful bow at Prince Victor, who snubbed him with a sign of fury.  “Going—­going—­gone!  Sold to Monsieur Lanyard for twenty thousand and one hundred guineas!”

And Lanyard had the satisfaction of seeing Prince Victor, after a vain effort to master his emotion, snatch up his topper, clap it on his head, and make for the door with footsteps whose stuttering haste was in poor accord with the dignity of his exalted station.

But it was debatable whether this satisfaction plus the possession of a questionable Corot was worth its cost.  And Lanyard wasn’t in the humour, now that the heat of contest began to abate, to look to Princess Sofia for promise of further reward.  Even if he could have been guilty of such impertinence, indeed, he must have forborne for very shame.  After all (he told himself) he hadn’t figured very creditably, permitting petty prejudice to sway him as it had.  He felt singularly sure he had played the gratuitous ass in this affair, and he didn’t in the least desire to see the reflection of a like conviction in the eyes of a pretty young woman with a flair for the ridiculous.

He dissembled his diminished self-esteem, however, most successfully, as he proceeded to the desk of the auctioneer’s clerk, filled in a cheque for the amount of his purchase, and gave instructions for its delivery.

Whether by intention or inadvertence, he was followed from the auction room by the Princess Sofia and Lady Diantha Mainwaring; and just outside the entrance he found Prince Victor waiting with all the air of a gentleman impatient for a cab to happen along and pick him up out of the drizzle.

But in view of the fact that he made no overtures to a passing hansom, which swerved in to the curb in response to a signal of Lanyard’s cane, this last concluded that the prince was up to his reputedly favourite game of waylaying his rebel wife.

If such were the case, Lanyard had no wish to witness a public wrangle between the two.  So he stepped briskly up on the carriage-block, and only hesitated when he saw that the prince, utterly ignoring the presence of the princess and Lady Diantha, was edging forward and cocking an alert ear to catch the address which Lanyard was on the point of giving the cabby.