Sinclair "any such burning would
remind me irresistibly of Mr. Mantalini's attempts at suicide.
There would be an accurate copy in your pocket-book, and besides
this you would probably have learnt off the recipe by heart."
"Yes, we know our Sir John better than that, don't we?" said the
Marchesa; "but, joking apart, Sir John, you might let me have the
recipe at once. It would go admirably with one of our lunch dishes
for to-morrow."
But on the subject of the sauce, Sir John--like the younger Mr.
Smallweed on the subject of gravy--was adamant. The wound caused
by the loss of Narcisse was, he declared, yet too recent: the very
odour of the sauce would provoke a thousand agonising regrets. And
then the hideous injustice of it all: Narcisse the artist,
comparatively innocent (for to artists a certain latitude must be
allowed), to moulder in quicklime, and this greedy, sordid
murderess to go on ogling and posturing with superadded popularity
before an idiot crowd unable to distinguish a Remoulade from a
Ravigotte! "No, my dear Marchesa," he said, "the secret of Narcisse
must be kept a little longer, for, to tell the truth, I have an
idea.
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