“I wanted to tell you,” said she gravely, with beautiful melancholy, “Charles is flambe.  He is done in.  I cannot help him.  He will not let me; but if I see him to-night when he returns to town I shall send him to you.  He is very young, very difficult, but I shall insist that he goes to you.”

“How kind you are!” said Mr. Prohack, touched.

Lady Massulam rose, shook hands, seemed to blush, and departed.  An interview as brief as it had been strange!  Mr. Prohack was thrilled, not at all by the announcement of Charlie’s danger, perhaps humiliation, but by the attitude of Lady Massulam.  He had his plans for Charlie.  He had no plans affecting Lady Massulam.

Mr. Softly Bishop’s luncheon had developed during the short absence of Mr. Prohack.  It’s splendour, great from the first, had increased; if tables ever do groan, which is perhaps doubtful, the table was certainly groaning; Mr. Softly Bishop was just dismissing, with bland and negligent approval, the major domo of the restaurant, with whom, like all truly important personages, he appeared to be on intimate terms.  But the chief development of the luncheon disclosed itself in the conversation.  Mr. Softly Bishop had now taken charge of the talk and was expatiating to a hushed and crushed audience his plans for a starring world-tour for his future wife, who listened to them with genuine admiration on her violet-tinted face.

“Eliza won’t be in it with me when I come back,” she exclaimed suddenly, with deep conviction, with anticipatory bliss, with a kind of rancorous ferocity.

Mr. Prohack understood.  Miss Fancy was uncompromisingly jealous of her half-sister’s renown.  To outdo that renown was the main object of her life, and Mr. Softly Bishop’s claim on her lay in the fact that he had shown her how to accomplish her end and was taking charge of the arrangements.  Mr. Softly Bishop was her trainer and her manager; he had dazzled her by the variety and ingenuity of his resourceful schemes; and his power over her was based on a continual implied menace that if she did not strictly obey all his behests she would fail to realise her supreme desire.

And when Mr. Softly Bishop gradually drew Ozzie into a technical tete-a-tete, Mr. Prohack understood further why Ozzie had been invited to the feast.  Upon certain branches of Mr. Bishop’s theatrical schemes Ozzie was an acknowledged expert, and Mr. Bishop was obtaining, for the price of a luncheon, the fruity knowledge and wisdom acquired by Ozzie during long years of close attention to business.

For Mr. Prohack it was an enthralling scene.  The luncheon closed gorgeously upon the finest cigars and cigarettes, the finest coffee, and the finest liqueurs that the unique establishment could provide.  Sissie refused every allurement except coffee, and Miss Fancy was permitted nothing but coffee.

“Do not forget your throat, my dear,” Mr. Softly Bishop authoritatively interjected into Miss Fancy’s circumstantial recital of the expensiveness of the bouquets which had been hurled at her in the New National Theatre at Washington.