Nelton knocked, and threw open the door without waiting for an answer.

“Her ladyship,” he announced.

Lady Derl entered.  She was looking very girlish in a close-fitting, tailored walking-suit.  The skirt was short—­the first short skirt to reach London.  Beneath it could be seen her very pretty feet.  They walked excitedly.

Lady Derl was angry.  She held a large card in her hand.  She tore it into bits and tossed it at Leighton’s feet.

“Glen,” she said, “don’t you ever dare to send me one of your engraved ‘regrets’ again.  Why—­why you’ve been rude to me!”

Leighton hung his head.  For one second Lewis had the delightful sensation of taking his father for a brother and in trouble.

“H lne,” said Leighton.  “I apologize humbly and abjectly.  I thought it would amuse you.”

“Apologies are hateful,” said Lady Derl.  “They’re so final.  To see a fine young quarrel, in the prime of life, die by lightning—­sad! sad!” She started drawing off her gloves.  “Let’s have tea.”  As she poured tea for them she asked, “And what’s the real reason you two aren’t coming to my dinner?”

Leighton picked up the maimed kid and laid it on the tea-tray.  He nodded toward Lewis.

“He made it, I’m going to gamble a bit on him.”

“Poor little thing!” said Lady Derl, poking the two-legged kid with her finger.

“I’m going to put him under Le Brux,—­Saint Anthony,—­if he’ll take him,” continued Leighton.  “We leave for Paris to-morrow.”

“Under Saint Anthony?” repeated Lady Derl.  “H—­m—­m!  Perhaps you are right.  But Blanche, Berthe, and Vi will hold it against me.”

When Lewis was alone with his father, he asked:  “Does Lady Derl belong to the Old Guard?”

“You wouldn’t think it, but she does,” said Leighton,—­“inside.”

CHAPTER XIX

“My boy,” said Leighton to Lewis two days later, as they were threading a narrow street in the shadow of Montmartre, “you will meet in a few moments Le Brux, the only living sculptor.  You will call him Maitre from the start.  If he cuffs you or swears at you, call him Mon Matre.  That’s all the French you will need for some months.”

Leighton dodged by a sleepy concierge with a grunted greeting and climbed a broad stone stairway, then a narrower flight.  He knocked on a door and opened it.  They passed into an enormous room, cluttered, if such space could be said to be cluttered, with casts, molding-boards, clay, dry and wet, a throne, a couch, a workman’s bench, and some dilapidated chairs.  A man in a smock stood in the midst of the litter.

When Lewis’s eye fell upon him as he turned toward them, the room suddenly became dwarfed.  The man was a giant.  A tremendous head, crowned with a mass of grayish hair, surmounted a monster body.  The voice, when it came, did justice to such a frame.  “My old one, my friend, Letonne!  Thou art well come.  Thou art the saving grace to an idle hour.”