"Most certainly not! A protégé of yours who faints at the piano wouldn't be at all suitable for one of my Evenings, thank you, Virginia."
Lady Virginia did not answer. She evidently had not heard. She never listened and never thought of one subject for more than two seconds at a time. She used a long-handled lorgnette, but usually dropped it before it had reached her eye.
"Oh! and there's something else I wanted to speak to you about. A sweet girl, a friend of mine (poor thing!), has lost her parents. They were generals or clergymen or something, and she's obliged to do something, so she's going in for hats. So sensible and brave of her! She's taken the sweetest little shop just out of Bond Street. Do, dear, go and get some toques there, for my sake. Won't you?"
"Some toques?" repeated Aunt William. "I don't know what you mean. Hats are not things you order by the half-dozen. I have my winter's bonnet, my spring bonnet which I have got already, a sun-hat for travelling in the summer, and so forth."
"I got a beautiful picture-hat from her," said Lady Virginia dreamily. "An enormous black one, with Nattier blue roses in front and white feathers at the back—- only five guineas. But then she makes special prices for me, of course."
"No doubt she does," said Aunt William.
"Of course I can't wear it, my dear," continued Virginia. "I hate to attract attention so, and I look too showy in a picture-hat with my fair hair. But it was a kindness to the girl. Poor girl!"
Aunt William was boiling over.
"Of course you can't wear it. Do you imagine you can wear the hat you've got on now, Virginia?"
"What this? It's only a little flower toque."