He had never cared so little to see his brother as one day when the door of his bedroom in the hotel unceremoniously opened and Randal entered. He had deprecated the effect of all this publicity on the most sensitive emotions of that high-strung and spirited nature. He was proud, too, and winced from the realization that all the world should be canvassing the fact of Randal’s rejection by Mrs. Floyd-Rosney in her girlhood days. She had treated him cruelly, and had dashed her plighted troth, his love, his happiness to the ground with not a moment’s compunction, for a marriage of splendor and wealth--“and,” said Adrian grimly to himself, “for it she has got all that was coming to her.”
He felt for Randal. His heart burned within him.
“Why, who is this that I see here?” cried Randal gaily, as he entered. “Not myself in a mirror surely, for I never looked half so glum in all my life.”
There was a hearty handclasp, and a sort of facetious fraternal hug, after the fashion of men who humorously disguise a deeper emotion, and they were presently seated in great amity before the glowing fire.
“This is imported Oriental tobacco,” said Adrian, handing his brother a cigar.
“Imported from where--the corner drugstore?” demanded Randal, laughing, his face illumined by the flicker of the lighted match.
“It’s like carrying coals to Newcastle to pay duty on tobacco in America.”
“Oh, you haven’t the grit to smuggle anything through, and if you had you would have brought enough to generously divvy up with me.”
He sent off a fragrant puff, stretched out luxuriously in his armchair, and turned his clear eyes upon his brother.
“I read the report of your address in the papers. It was very able and convincing.”
“I’d care more for your compliments if you understood the subject,” declared Randal cavalierly. Then, roguishly, “Is that _all_ you have read about me in the papers lately?”
Adrian stared, dumfounded. And he had so wincingly deprecated the effect of this limelight of publicity upon the shrinking heart of the rejected lover.
“I think it very hard you should be subjected to this,” he began sympathetically.
“Who--I? Why,--I was never so pleased in my life!”
“Why--what do you mean, Randal? It is a very serious matter; it might have had a life-and-death significance.”