But Mrs. Falkener, uttering a slight exclamation of impatience, moved away.
Lefferts turned to Crane, with his unruffled smile.
"She doesn't like me," he said.
"Cora," he added, very slightly raising his voice so as to attract the attention of Miss Falkener, who immediately approached them, "Cora, why is it your mother hates me so much?"
"She certainly does," returned Cora frankly. "You know, Leonard, you are really rather stupid with her. You always begin by saying things she doesn't understand, and of course no one likes that."
Lefferts sighed.
"You see, she stimulates me so tremendously. One gets used to just merely boring or depressing one's friends, but to be actively hated is exciting. People who have lived through blood feuds and tong wars tell you that there is no excitement comparable to it. I feel a little like the leader of a tong whenever I meet Mrs. Falkener. Cora, would you belong to my tong, or would you feel loyalty demanded your remaining in your mother's?"
They went in to luncheon before Cora was obliged to answer, and here Lefferts contrived to sit next to her by the comparatively simple expedient of making the man who had already seated himself at her side get up and yield him the place.
Crane, sitting between his host and another man, enjoyed a period of quiet. Without his exactly arranging it, a definite plan for the afternoon was growing up in his mind—a plan which, it must be confessed, had been first suggested by Tucker's idea of staying at home, a plan based on a vision of Jane-Ellen and Willoughby holding the kitchen in solitary state.
Crane knew that luncheons at Eliot's were long ceremonies. Food was served and eaten slowly, you sat a long time over coffee and cigars, and at the smallest encouragement, Eliot would bring out his grandfather's Madeira. And after that you were unusually lucky if you escaped a visit to the stables, and that meant the whole afternoon.