Yet had it
been Randolph, he would have smiled a wan smile and tried for a mild joke,
conscious that he had made an original and picturesque contribution to the
affair,--had broken the bland banality of routined dinner-giving and had
provided woman with a mighty fine chance to "minister" and fuss: a thing
she rather enjoyed doing, especially if a hapless, helpless man had been
delivered into her hands as a subject.
But there was no such consolation for poor abashed Cope. He had disclosed
himself, for some reason or other, a weakling; and he had weakened at a
conspicuously wrong time and in a conspicuously mistaken place. He had
hoped, over the cigars and coffee, to lay the foundation of an acquaintance
with the brother-in-law who was a trustee,--to set up an identity in this
influential person's mind as a possible help to the future of Arthur
Lemoyne. But the man now in the dining-room, or the drawing-room, or
wherever, might as well be in the next state.
There came a slight patter of rain on the bay-window near his head. He
began to wonder how he was to get home.
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, among the ladies, Mrs.
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