“You certainly are an unsociable hostess, but those boys are becoming bores. Whom do you expect next week? You must have something to leaven the lump of pining youthful masculinity.”
“That poet is coming—the one who writes the virile poems, you know, and whose article of faith is the joie de vivre; and Lady Tramley, dear creature, Lord Tramley, and—would you specify Sir Arthur as leaven?”
“Do you mean to imply that he isn’t pining?”
“I imply nothing so evident.”
“Wriggling, then—that you must own.”
Camelia was sitting near the window, opened on its framing magnolia leaves, and said rather coolly as she took off her hat—
“No, I am wriggling. I must decide now.”
This was a masterly assurance. Mrs. Fox-Darriel reflecting that nothing succeeds like unruffled self-confidence, and that Camelia’s had never shown a ripple of doubt, owned to herself that her slightly stinging question was well answered.
“Don’t wriggle, my dear; decide,” she said, accepting the restatement very placidly, “you could not do better. To speak vulgarly—the man is rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”
“Beautifully rich,” Camelia assented.