“You have forgotten to mention that you are in this room,” replied Hammond. “But I share your views about the music. If we have got to pretend to enjoy art, why can’t it be painting or poetry, or something that won’t positively annoy us?”
“It wouldn’t do for my mother to hear me,” said Victoria, “but I may as well confess to you that I have absolutely no accomplishments. I don’t play the violin, I don’t model in clay, and I don’t even write answers to questions on etiquette in the Young Ladies’ Journal.”
“Surely you kodak?” Hammond pleaded.
Before Lady Victoria could clear herself from the charge, the voice of the machine sounded through the curtain:
“The Dean of Colchester!”
Hammond turned pale.
“Whatever is the dean doing here?” he gasped.
Victoria shrugged her shoulders.
“My mother likes to have the higher clergy at her parties. She thinks their costume gives variety.”
“Whenever I meet that man he asks me for a subscription,” Hammond was beginning, when the dean himself, forewarned by some preternatural intuition, turned aside from the reception-room and came through the curtain.