you know. See that woman next but three? That's Gertrude Melrose; spends more on clothes than any woman in London, and she's only got nine hundred a year. Queer?" He smiled as he consumed an almond.
"She must get into debt," said Mina, gazing at the clothes of inexplicable origin.
"Gettin' in isn't the mystery," remarked the youth. "It's the gettin' out, Madame—er—Zabriska." He had taken a swift glance at Mina's card.
Mina looked round. "Is it in this room they have the Councils?" she asked.
"Cabinets? Don't know. Downstairs somewhere, I believe, anyhow." He smothered a yawn. "Queer thing, that about Tristram, you know. If everything was known, you know, I shouldn't wonder if a lot of other fellows found themselves——"
He was interrupted, fortunately perhaps, in these speculations by a question from his other neighbor. Mina was left alone for some minutes, and set to work to observe the scene. She was tolerably at ease now; a man was on each side of her, and in the end it was the women of whom she was afraid. There would be a terrible time in the drawing-room, but she determined not to think of that. Harry saw her sitting silent and smiled across at her while he listened to Lady Flora. The smile seemed to come from a great way off. The longer she sat there the more that impression grew; he seemed so much and so naturally a part of the scene and one of the company. She was so emphatically not one of them, save by the merest accident and for an evening's span. The sense of difference and distance troubled her. She thought of Cecily alone at home, and grew more troubled still. She felt absurd too, because she had been trying to help Harry. If that had to be done, she supposed Lady Flora would do it now.
The idea was bitter. Where difference of class comes in, women seem more hostile to one another than men are to men; perhaps this should be considered in relation to the franchise question.
Through the talk of the rest she listened to Harry and Lady Flora. That Harry should hold his own did not surprise her; it was rather unexpected that he should do it so lightly and so urbanely. Lord Hove tried to intervene once or twice, with no success; capricious waves of sympathy undulated across to him from Mina. She turned her head by chance, and found Mr Disney silent too, and looking at her. The next moment he spoke to the easy-mannered youth.
"Well, Theo, what's the world saying and doing?"
"Same as last year, Cousin Robert," answered Theo cheerfully. "Government's a year older, of course."