“It’s extraordinary how many people think I look like dear old Brock,” said the false Roxbury.  “But, on the other hand, most people think that Brock looks like me, so what’s the odds?  Haw, haw!  Ripping!  Eh, Mr. Rodney?”

“Ripping?  Ripping what?  Good God, am I ripping anything?” gasped Mr. Rodney, who was fussy and fat and generally futile.  He seemed to grow suddenly uncomfortable, as if ripping was a habit with him.

Dinner was a success.  Brock shone with a refulgence that bedimmed all expectations.  His wife was delighted; in all of the four years of married life, Roxbury had never been so brilliant, so deliciously English (to use her own expression).  Constance tingled with pride.  Of late, she had experienced unusual difficulty in diverting her gaze from the handsome impostor, and her thoughts were ever of him—­in justification of a platonic interest, of course, no more than that.  To-night her eyes and thoughts were for him alone,—­a circumstance which, could he have felt sure, would have made him wildly happy, instead of inordinately furious in his complete misunderstanding of her manner toward Freddie Ulstervelt, who had no compunction about making love to two girls at the same time.  She was never so beautiful, never so vivacious, never so resourceful.  Brock was under the spell; he was fascinated; he had to look to himself carefully in order to keep his wits in the prescribed channel.

His self-esteem received a severe shock at the opera.  Mrs. Medcroft, with malice aforethought, insisted that Ulstervelt should take her husband’s seat.  As the box held but six persons, the unfortunate Brock was compelled to shift more or less for himself.  Inwardly raging, he suavely assured the party—­Freddie in particular—­that he would find a seat in the body of the house and would join them during the Entr’acte.  Then he went out and sat in the foyer.  It was fortunate that he hated Wagner.  Before the end of the act he was joined by Mr. Rodney, horribly bored and eager for relief.  In a near-by cafe they had a whiskey and soda apiece, and, feeling comfortably reinforced, returned to the opera house arm-in-arm, long and short, thin and fat, liberally discoursing upon the intellectuality of Herr Wagner.

“Say, you’re not at all like an Englishman,” exclaimed Mr. Rodney impulsively, even gratefully.

“Eh, what?” gasped Brock, replacing his eyeglass.  “Oh, I say, now, ’pon my word, haw, haw!”

“You’ve got an American sense of humour, Medcroft, that’s what you have.  You recognise the joke that Wagner played on the world.  Pardon me for saying it, sir, but I didn’t think it was in an Englishman.”

“Haw, haw!  Ripping, by Jove!  No, no!  Not you.  I mean the joke.  But then, you see, it’s been so long since Wagner played it that even an Englishman has had time to see the point.  Besides, I’ve lived a bit of my life in America.”

“That accounts for it,” said the tactless but sincere Mr. Rodney.