"Then he's a phenomenon. I wish I might have met him."
Waltheof laughed. "He seems to have had trouble enough," he said.
But Sir Caryll Carleigh's troubles weren't over by any means. At the last minute the wedding invitations were recalled and the presents returned. A fortnight later his aunt received from him the following letter, dated from a village in Perthshire:
Dear Aunt Kitty: I'm up here spearing salmon and all that sort of thing, don't you know, and trying to forget. It was a beastly cropper—this wedding mess—and I've gone to pieces over it, for I did love Rosamond awfully. Such a ripping girl! Twenty thousand a year in her own right, too, left her by that diamond chap, just for taking his rotting name. Sounds like a disinfectant or some chemist stuff to me. Veynol. Pah!
However, she decided at the last minute that she liked it better than Carleigh, and there you are. And here am I, most fearfully cut up. I'll never get over it. I jolly well know I sha'n't. It is a sickener, I can tell you, and I'm thinking strongly of going in for the church—joining some order or brotherhood or some such silly old thing.
One thing I am sure of. I'll never look a woman in the face again. I hate the whole bally lot. Of course, you're not in this, you know—for you have been a good sort all through. Regular top-hole, you are. But I mean other women—girls—and all that rubbishy lot.
And now, dearest and best of aunties, I've a favor to ask. This mess-up, you know, has cost me a pretty penny, and the truth is, I'm stony. Do send me a tenner by return of post. I'll pay you back when I sell the engagement ring. It's ripping. It is really.
Your affectionate but heart-broken nephew,
Caryll.
CHAPTER IX
There's a Lass in Dundee!
Into Nina's flat in Mayfair, one rare August morning, entered Lord Kneedrock, unannounced. He found her in her little drawing-room arranging flowers in a vase—flowers not a whit more lovely than herself.
"Whose?" he asked, nodding toward them. It was his first and only word, and she had not seen him for two months.
She went him one better—one letter better.