"Count Shimbowski and Alice Endicott?" put in Mrs. Harbinger. "Is that the latest? Sit down, Mrs. Croydon. Really, it doesn't seem to me that it is likely that such a thing could be true, and the relatives not be notified."
She reseated herself as she spoke, and busied herself with the tea-equipage. May rather threw herself down than resumed her seat.
"Certainly it can't be true," the latter protested. "The idea of Alice's being engaged and we not know it!"
"But it's true; I have it direct," insisted Mrs. Croydon; "Miss Wentstile told Mr. Bradish, and he told me."
May sniffed rather inelegantly.
"Oh, Miss Wentstile! She thinks because Alice is her niece she can do what she likes with her. It's all nonsense. Alice has always been fond of Jack Neligage. Everybody knows that."
Mrs. Croydon managed somehow to communicate to her innumerable streamers and pennants a flutter which seemed to be meant to indicate violent inward laughter.
"Oh, what a child you are, Miss Calthorpe! I declare, I really must put you into my next novel. I really must!"
"May is still so young as to be romantic, of course," Mrs. Harbinger remarked, flashing at her young friend a quick sidewise glance. "Besides which she has been educated in a convent; and in a convent a girl must be either imaginative or a fool, or she'll die of ennui."
"I suppose you never were romantic yourself," put in May defensively.