She almost laughed.
"But didn't you go unnecessarily far with the poor kid?"
"Only as far as I was obliged to go to effect my purpose. But do you suppose I am only the second man with whom she has flirted heavily? Do you suppose I am even the sixth? I took care that she should realise that it was only a rag. She is deep and she is passionate. She knows what a good rag is. And she will behave very differently, I can assure you, when she meets the man with whom she feels she cannot play without burning her pretty fingers. She won't accept his first overtures so readily, believe me. She will be too terrified, as all decent women are when they are truly and deeply moved. She won't even yield so very quickly to his repeated overtures. She will realise that the affair is too deep, too committing, too final for that."
"But didn't you kiss her?" Cleopatra enquired.
"Of course I did," replied Lord Henry, chuckling quite heartily now. "But is not a man entitled to kiss his future sister-in-law?"
Two tears rolled slowly down her face, and she fumbled hurriedly for her handkerchief.
"Come, come, my beloved Cleo," he exclaimed, taking her into his arms, "allow me to say that. Allow me to regard that kiss in that light. It makes it so perfectly innocent. Didn't you feel that that is what I was driving at? Oh, how easily I could have prevented all this if only Leonetta hadn't dragged so on the way home!"
And then, as they approached the outskirts of Brineweald, they quickly decided on their plan of action. It was settled that only Mrs. Delarayne, Leonetta, and Stephen should ever know the truth about the accident, and that, even so, Leonetta should not be told until she was sensible enough to see how inevitable and how "natural" it was. Meanwhile, everyone was to believe that Lord Henry had made a fool of himself,—a fact which, as both he and Cleopatra knew, would afford infinite satisfaction to Miss Mallowcoid, Denis, and the baronet.
Two months later, at about half-past eleven on a drizzly October morning, there was a small and fashionable-looking crowd assembled near the edge of one of the quays at the East India docks, and as the huge Oriental liner moved slowly out into the Thames, five people on its upper deck waved frantically towards this group. They were Cleopatra, Lord Henry, the Tribes, and young Stephen Fearwell.