“Put what you’ve got to tell me as clearly as you can,” said the Duke. “I never was a sap at Eton, and the classical names of these Johnnies you’re thingambobbing on the what’s-a-name rather queer me.”
“The design outlined on the plaster in the central space on the left-hand side of the skylight dome,” said Wopse, A.R.A., “is the ‘Judgment of Paris.’ The three figures of the rival goddesses are completely outlined, but, as you see, Paris is only roughly blocked in.”
“I don’t see a city,” said the Duke with some annoyance. “I only see a bit of a man. And, as for being block-tin——”
“Paris was a man—or, rather, a youth,” said Halcyon Wopse, quoting—
“‘Fair and disdainfully lidded, the Shepherd of Ida, Holding the golden apple, desired of——’”
“Hold on! When people get spouting it knocks me galley-west,” said the Duke. “Just tell me plainly what the beggar was to judge? Goddesses? I savvy! And which of ’em took the biscuit—I mean the apple? Venus? Right you are! That’s as much as I can hold at one time, thanky!”
“Sorry if I’ve over-estimated the extent of the accommodation,” said Halcyon Wopse, smiling and lighting a cigar.
“One of the Partagas. Now, hang it,” said the Duke, “that is infernally stupid of my man.”
“Of my man, you mean,” corrected the painter.
“I begin to think,” said the Duke, “that I have, in falling in with the absurd plot, cooked up by that old footler, Beaumaris, and swopping characters with a beg—with an artist fellow like you, in order to take the fancy of a long-haired, long-legged colt of a girl——”
“I presume you allude to Lady Lymston?” put in the painter coldly.
“Of course. I say, in tumblin’ to the idea and embarkin’ in the game, I’ve made an ass of myself,” said the Duke. “As for you, you’re in clover.”
“Pardon,” said the painter. “The name is my own. And let us say, simply, that in changing identities with your Grace in order to enable your Grace to cast a glamour of artistic romance over a very ordinary——”
“Situation,” continued the painter. “In doing this I have laid up for myself a considerable store of regret.”
“Regret! Why, hang you! You’re chalkin’ up scores the whole bally time!” shrieked the Duke, stamping his tan shoes on the canvas-protected parquet. “Beaumaris’s guests—only a few purposely selected fogies and duffers, who don’t count, it’s true—believe you to be me. They flatter you and defer to you. You take the Dowager in to dinner, and I’m left to toddle after with Susanna’s French governess. I’m out of everything—and obliged to talk Art, bally Art—from mornin’ till night! While you—you’ve ridden to cub-hunts on my mounts—driven my motor-cars and bust my tires——”