“When you get well you must help us.  There’s an infinite amount to be done.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Paul politely.

“You’ll find I’m a terrible person to deal with when once I’ve laid my hands on anybody,” she said with a smile.  “I drag in all kinds of people, and they can’t escape.  I sent young Harry Gostling—­Lord Ruthmere’s son, you know—­to look into a working girls’ club in the Isle of Dogs that was going wrong.  He hated it at first, but now he’s as keen as possible.  And you’ll be keen too.”

It was flattering to be classified with leisured and opulent young Guardsmen; but what, Paul reflected with a qualm, would the kind lady say if she learned the real state of his present fortunes?  He thought of the guinea that lay between him and starvation, and was amused by the irony of her proposition.  Miss Winwood evidently took it for granted that he was in easy circumstances, living on the patrimony administered during his boyhood by a careless guardian.  He shrank from undeceiving her.  His dream was beginning to come true.  He was accepted by one of the high caste as belonging to the world where princes and princesses dwelt serene.  If only he could put the theatre behind him, as he had put the rest, and make a stepping-stone of his dead actor self!  But that was impossible, or at least the question would have to be fought out between himself and fortune after he had left Drane’s Court.  In the meanwhile he glowed with the ambition to leave it in his newly acquired splendour, drums beating, banners flying, the young prince returning to his romantic and mysterious solitude.

The time was approaching when he should get up.  He sent for his luggage.  The battered trunk and portmanteau plastered with the labels of queer provincial towns did not betray great wealth.  Nor did the contents, taken out by the man-servant and arranged in drawers by the nurse.  His toilet paraphernalia was of the simplest and scantiest.  His stock of frayed linen and darned underclothes made rather a poor little heap on the chair.  He watched the unpacking somewhat wistfully from his bed; and, like many another poor man, inwardly resented his poverty being laid bare to the eyes of the servants of the rich.

The only thing that the man seemed to handle respectfully—­as a recognized totem of a superior caste—­was a brown canvas case of golf clubs, which he stood up in a conspicuous corner of the room.  Paul had taken to the Ancient and Royal game when first he went on tour, and it had been a health-giving resource during the listless days when there was no rehearsal or no matinee—­hundreds of provincial actors, to say nothing of retired colonels and such-like derelicts, owe their salvation of body and soul to the absurd but hygienic pastime—­and with a naturally true eye and a harmonious body trained to all demands on its suppleness in the gymnasium, proficiency had come with little trouble.  He was a born golfer;