She seemed annoyed at the question, then smiled again.
"I don't know! The other day I called at the studio unexpectedly to ask for something I'd forgotten, and found Harry improvising at the piano—you know that way he has of improvising from memory—an inaccurate memory—of some well-known composer. I've never known him do it except when he wanted to—please some woman. Well, Lady Walmer was there, leaning over the piano and listening. Should you think from that he's keen, as you call it, on her?"
"Lady Walmer! At her age!"
"Why, Romer, she's no older than anybody else! It doesn't matter nowadays in the very slightest degree whether one is twenty-eight, or thirty-eight, or even forty-eight. To a modern man it's all exactly the same. Of course, if a flapper is what is required, well then, naturally, he must be shown to another department. But apart from that—why, Lady Walmer would be quite as dangerous a rival for me as a woman ten years or twenty years younger. And I'm not twenty-five yet."
"Rival to you? What do you mean?"
Romer stared at her, a spark of his fanatic admiration showing in his eyes.
She laughed and hurried on.
"Nothing. I never mean anything. I know what you think, Harry is not a marrying man, but he might become one. But a girl like Alec Walmer! With the figure of a suffragette and the mind of a canary who plays cricket, or a goose who goes in for golf——"
"Heaps of cash."