Or perhaps the impatient nature of the man who lay so
closely secret within the husk of Nogam decided him upon a desperate
gamble. In either event, this befell:
About the middle of the evening Prince Victor happened to look up from an
interesting tete-a-tete in the brilliant drawing-room with his handsome and
liberal-minded hostess opportunely to espy Nogam staring at him from the
remote recesses of the entrance hall.
It was the merest of glimpses; for Victor's casual glance had barely
identified the servant when Nogam started guiltily and in a twinkling
disappeared; but a glimpse was enough for eyes and a mind alike quick with
distrust, enough to assure Victor that Nogam's face had worn an
indescribably furtive and hangdog expression, most unlike its ordinary look
of amiable stupidity, and widely incongruous with the veniality of his
fault.
What the deuce, then, was the fellow up to, that he should glower and dodge
like a sleuth in a play?
Promptly Victor became deaf, blind, and numb to the fascinations so
generously paraded by Lady Randolph West; and presently excusing himself,
left her and sought his rooms.
As he went up the stairs, he saw the door to his bedchamber cautiously
opened far enough to permit one eye to spy out and discover his approach.
Immediately then the door swung wide, and Nogam ambled into view with an
envelope on a salver and an air of childlike innocence, an assumption of
ease so transparent, indeed, that only the vision of a child could have
been cheated by it.
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