"Oh, we'll say Lady Tristram still," Harry interrupted.
Edge gave a little bow. "I shall be ready to meet her or her advisers at any time," he remarked. "She will, I hope, recognize that no other course was open to me. She must not think that there is any room for doubt."
Harry's brain was at work now; he saw himself going to Blent, going to tell Cecily.
"Possibly," Mr Neeld suggested, "it would be better to intrust a third person with the task of giving her this news? One of her own sex perhaps?" He seemed to contemplate a possible fainting-fit, and, remembering his novels, the necessity of cutting stay-laces, a task better left to women.
"You're thinking of Mina? Of Mina Zabriska?"
asked Harry, laughing. There again, what a loss! Why had not Mina heard it at first hand? She would have known how to treat the thing.
"She's always taken a great interest in the matter, and—and I understand is very friendly with—with Miss Gainsborough," said Neeld.
"We shall have to make up our minds what to call ourselves soon," sighed Harry.
"There can be no doubt at all," Edge put in; "and if I may venture to suggest, I should say that the sooner the necessity is faced the better."
"Certainly, certainly," Harry assented absently. Even the girl in the restaurant must know about it soon; there must be another pow-wowing in all the papers soon. But what would Cecily say? "If ever the time comes——." He had laughed at that; it had sounded so unlikely, so unreal, so theatrical. "If ever the time comes, I shall remember." That was a strange thing to look back to now. But it was all strange—the affair of the beastly new viscounty, Blinkhampton and its buildings, the Arbitration and the confidence of Mr Disney. Madame Valfier—Comtesse d'Albreville—with a little help from Addie Tristram had brought all these things about. The result of Harry's review of them was English enough to satisfy Wilmot Edge himself.