"Extremely."

"And hopelessly vague."

"Yes--but quite charming."

"Beatrice says she pretends to be full of s.e.x and other dreadful natural things--you always had fruity tastes, Beatrice avers!"

"My tastes _are_ fruity, but are never gratified in these modern days, alas! She is quite wrong about Lao, though; she is as cold as ice. She smiles with equal sweetness upon the waiters when we are lunching at restaurants. She is merely a lovely woman demanding incense from all things male.

"Beatrice said 'pretends,' remember--Beatrice is not at all dense!"

"No, quite a subtle companion when not composing odes, or discussing the intensity of blue with Hebe Vermont."

"--Are you glad Lao is coming for Christmas?"

"Y--es. I shall want some of your very best champagne."

"You shall have it, G., and I will try to make things difficult for you as a sort of appetiser. I have some kind of feeling that you are depressed, dear boy?--I am putting Lao in the parrot suite."

"It will suit her admirably."

Then they both laughed.

"But you are depressed, G.?"

"A shadow of coming events, perhaps! not exactly disaster, or I should be what the Scotch call 'fey,'" and he sighed. He felt very fatigued and disturbed, and he hardly knew what.

Lady Garribardine did not press the matter. She had enormous tact.

Mrs. Delemar at that moment was lying upon her sofa in a ravishing saffron gauze teagown smoking scented cigarettes, while she discussed her heart's secrets with a dearest friend.

"Gerard is madly in love with me, Agnes. I hardly know what to do about it. I have chucked for to-night on purpose to give him a setback."

"It will be most cosy dining here alone with Bobbie Moreland and Jimmy and me. You were quite right, darling."

"Poor Bobbie, back from that horrible India where he has been for a year--of course, I could not refuse him--But Lady Garribardine is wild."

"It would not do to offend her really, Lao sweet. You must be penitent and send her some flowers to-morrow."

If Katherine Bush had been there, she would have seen a strong likeness in Mrs. Delemar to her future sister-in-law, Mabel Cawber; her cigarette ash was knocked off in almost as dainty a fashion as that lady employed in using her spoon. Mrs. Delemar _never_ ceased remembering that she was a beautiful woman, and must act accordingly; the only difference between them was that Mabel Cawber _never_ forgot that she was a perfect lady, and was determined that no one should miss this fact if she could help it. Their souls were on a par--or whatever animating principle did duty as a soul in each.

Mrs. Delemar returned to the subject of Gerard with a sigh, telling her friend Agnes the most intimate things he had said to her and giving her pleasing descriptions of her own emotions, too. Gerard was a feather for any woman's cap, and Agnes should know how crazily in love he was with her.

"I think he'll do something desperate, darling--if I don't give way soon--I wish men were like us, don't you?"

"One must please the creatures, or they would not stay."

"Yes--but oh! isn't it a shocking bore--that part--if they only knew!"

Katherine Bush, meanwhile, was arriving at Laburnum Villa, where a crowd of sisters and friends welcomed her home.

Fresh from the entrancing fencing match with Gerard Strobridge, their well-meant chaff and badinage sounded extremely bald. But among them poor Gladys was silent, and sat with flushed cheeks and overbright eyes, looking at Katherine.

"I want to talk to you, Glad," this latter said, kindly. "Lady Garribardine has given me ten pounds to get a real evening frock with.

I must have it to take down to Blissington for Christmas--we go to-morrow week. But can I get it in the time?"

Gladys was all interest at once. Clothes were a real pa.s.sion for her.

She devised something pretty; but five pounds would be quite enough.

Katherine had better have two dresses, a black and that lovely new shade of mauve.

"I'll have the black, the very simplest that there can be, if you know of one of your hands who could make it for me. I'll leave it entirely to you."

Gladys was delighted, and then her large prominent eyes grew haunted and wistful.

"I'd like awfully to talk to you to-night, Kitten," she said. "May I come to your room?"

Permission was given, and they all went to supper. It was exactly as Katherine had described it that afternoon, and Mr. Prodgers was there in his best frock coat, more full of what Miss Ethel Bush called "sw.a.n.k"

mixed with discomfort than Katherine had ever known him. If she had not felt so deeply that these people were her own flesh and blood, she could have been amused by the whole thing.

Nothing could equal the condescension of Miss Cawber. Lady Garribardine's name was not entirely unknown to her--although, to be sure, it was not in the same cla.s.s as that of the d.u.c.h.ess of Dashington, Lady Hebe Vermont or any of the "smart set"--but still it had chanced once now and then to have appeared in the society column of the _Flare_, she rather thought as the patroness of some dull old political thing--and yes--more recently in connection with those _tableaux vivants_, which Miss Cawber was dying to hear the details of; perhaps Katherine could gratify his need?

"Did Hebe Vermont look a dream as Sicchy and Lord St. Aldens as Cupid?

My! they must have been a pair! I always do say to Fred when we meet them at church parade of a Sunday that they are the real thing."

Katherine for once took up the gauntlet, while one of her sphinxlike smiles hovered about her mouth.

"_Lady_ Hebe Vermont played Psyche--if that is who you mean by 'Sicchy'--but who is Lord St. Aldens, Mabel? Mr. John St. Aldens, who acted Cupid, is an 'Honourable'; he is a Baron's son, his father is Lord Hexam."

Mabel reddened; while maintaining for the most part a rather chilling silence with her, Katherine had never before deliberately crossed swords. She felt indignant! A paid companion to try to make her look foolish before the others! She who had never done a stroke of work even in a business house in her life! She would have to put this future sister-in-law in her place, and no mistake! Her manner plainly showed that Katherine was in disgrace, as she answered loftily:

"Really, I ought to know--My father was a great friend of his father, and often went to their place."

"In what capacity, Mabel?" Katherine smiled. "We none of us remember your father, but Liv and Dev told me once when I asked them that he had been an under-clerk at Canford and Crin's--the St. Alden solicitors--and then pa.s.sed the examinations. From what I've learned about his sort of people by living among them for a month, I don't expect Lord Hexam was very intimate with Mr. Cawber--but we are all acquainted in the same way, aren't we, Tild? You remember hearing of this family from mother's father, who was their butcher for the river house at Maidenhead."

Mabel glared; this was sheer impertinence; her queenship of this circle was not being treated with proper respect--How vulgar of Katherine, she thought!

Mabel's refinement was almost of the degree of the Boston lady who insisted upon the piano's "limbs" being put into pantaloons with frills.

She would hardly have spoken of a butcher! She felt particularly annoyed now also, because the clerk episode was a fact which she thought was quite unknown--the solicitorship at Bindon's Green having gloriously advanced the family fortunes.

Poor Matilda was quite upset and reproached Katherine when she succeeded in getting her into a corner alone.

"Whatever did you speak to Mabel like that for, Kitten?--And I am sure we need not tell everyone about Grandpa--since he did not live here."

"Her nonsense makes me feel quite sick, Tild--she is always pretending some ridiculous knowledge and acquaintanceship with the aristocracy. She gets all the names wrong, and gives herself away all the time; it does her good to be found out once in a way."