And yet his happiness was marred—­not fatally but quite appreciably—­by a remorse that no amount of private argument with himself would conjure away.  Which was the more singular in that a morbid tendency to remorse had never been among Edward Henry’s defects!  He was worrying, foolish fellow, about the false telephone-call in which, for the purpose of testing Rose Euclid’s loyalty to the new enterprise, he had pretended to be the new private secretary of Sir John Pilgrim.  Yet what harm had it done?  And had it not done a lot of good?  Rose Euclid and her youthful worshipper were no worse off than they had been before being victimized by the deceit of the telephone-call.  Prior to the call they had assumed themselves to be deprived for ever of the benefits which association with Sir John Pilgrim could offer, and as a fact they were deprived for ever of such benefits.  Nothing changed there!  Before the call they had had no hope of lunching with the enormous Sir John on the morrow, and as a fact they would not lunch with the enormous Sir John on the morrow.  Nothing changed there, either!  Again, in no event would Edward Henry have joined the trio in order to make a quartet in partnership.  Even had he been as convinced of Rose’s loyalty as he was convinced of her disloyalty, he would never have been rash enough to co-operate with such a crew.  Again, nothing changed!

On the other hand, he had acquired an assurance of the artiste’s duplicity, which assurance had made it easier for him to disappoint her, while the prospect of a business repast with Sir John had helped her to bear the disappointment as a brave woman should.  It was true that on the morrow, about lunch-time, Rose Euclid and Carlo Trent might have to live through a few rather trying moments, and they would certainly be very angry; but these drawbacks would have been more than compensated for in advance by the pleasures of hope.  And had they not between them pocketed seventy-five pounds which they had stood to lose?

Such reasoning was unanswerable, and his remorse did not attempt to answer it.  His remorse was not open to reason; it was one of those stupid, primitive sentiments which obstinately persist in the refined and rational fabric of modern humanity.

He was just sorry for Rose Euclid.

“Do you know what I did?” he burst out confidentially, and confessed the whole telephone-trick to Mr. Seven Sachs.

Mr. Seven Sachs, somewhat to Edward Henry’s surprise, expressed high admiration of the device.

“A bit mean, though, don’t you think?” Edward Henry protested weakly.

“Not at all!” cried Mr. Sachs.  “You got the goods on her.  And she deserved it.”

(Again this enigmatic and mystical word “goods”!  But he understood it.)

Thus encouraged, he was now quite determined to give Mr. Seven Sachs a brief episodic account of his career.  A fair conversational opening was all he wanted in order to begin.