Now on the desk there was the ordinary hotel stationery, mourning stationery, cards, letter-cards and envelopes for every mood; but not a piece that was not embossed with the historic name in royal blue.  The which appeared to Edward Henry to point to a defect of foresight on the part of Wilkins’s.  At the gigantic political club to which he belonged, and which he had occasionally visited in order to demonstrate to himself and others that he was a clubman, plain stationery was everywhere provided for the use of husbands with a taste for reticence.  Why not at Wilkins’s also?

On the other hand, why should he not write to his wife on Wilkins’s paper?  Was he afraid of his wife?  He was not.  Would not the news ultimately reach Bursley that he had stayed at Wilkins’s?  It would.  Nevertheless, he could not find the courage to write to Nellie on Wilkins’s paper.

He looked around.  He was fearfully alone.  He wanted the companionship, were it only momentary, of something human.  He decided to have a look at the flunkey, and he rang a bell.

Immediately, just as though wafted thither on a magic carpet from the Court of Austria, a gentleman-in-waiting arrived in the doorway of the drawing-room, planted himself gracefully on his black silk calves, and bowed.

“I want some plain note-paper, please.”

“Very good, sir.”  Oh!  Perfection of tone and of mien!

Three minutes later the plain note-paper and envelopes were being presented to Edward Henry on a salver.  As he took them he looked inquiringly at the gentleman-in-waiting, who supported his gaze with an impenetrable, invulnerable servility.  Edward Henry, beaten off with great loss, thought:  “There’s nothing doing here just now in the human companionship line,” and assumed the mask of a hereditary prince.

The black calves carried away their immaculate living burden, set above all earthly ties.

He wrote nicely to Nellie about the weather and the journey and informed her also that London seemed as full as ever, and that he might go to the theatre but he wasn’t sure.  He dated the letter from the Majestic.

As he was finishing it he heard mysterious, disturbing footfalls in his private corridor, and after trying for some time to ignore them, he was forced by a vague alarm to investigate their origin.  A short, middle-aged, pallid man, with a long nose and long moustaches, wearing a red-and-black-striped sleeved waistcoat and a white apron, was in the corridor.  At the Turk’s Head such a person would have been the boots.  But Edward Henry remembered a notice under the bell, advising visitors to ring once for the waiter, twice for the chambermaid, and three times for the valet.  This, then, was the valet.  In certain picturesque details of costume Wilkins’s was coquettishly French.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“I came to see if your luggage had arrived, sir.  No doubt your servant is bringing it.  Can I be of any assistance to you?”