Alighting at his own door, the adventurer surprised Prince Victor, morosely
ambling by, in his vast fatuity no doubt imagining that his passage through
Halfmoon Street would go unremarked in the dusk of that early winter
evening. He wasn't at all pleased to find himself mistaken; and though
Lanyard did his best with his blandest smile to make amends for having
discomfited the prince by getting home later than he had promised to, his
good-natured effort was repaid only by a spiteful scowl.

So he laughed aloud, and went indoors rejoicing.

An hour or so later the painting was delivered by a porter from the auction
room. But Lanyard was in his bath at the time and postponed examining his
doubtful prize till he had dressed for dinner. For, though it was his whim
to dine in his rooms alone, and though he had no fixed plans for the
evening, Lanyard was too thoroughly cosmopolitan not to do in Cockaigne as
the Cockneys do.

Besides, in this uncertain life one never knows what the next hour will
bring forth; whereas if one is in evening dress after six o'clock, one is
armoured against every emergency.

At seven he sat down to the morbid sort of a meal one gets in London
lodgings: a calm soup; a segment of vague fish smothered painlessly in a
pale pink blanket of sauce; a cut from the joint, rare and lukewarm;
potatoes boiled dead; sad sea-kale; nonconformist pudding; conservative
biscuit, and radical cheese.

With the aid and abetment of a bottle of excellent Montrachet, however, one
contrived to worry through.