“Winnie!” began Audrey in the studio, with assumed indifference. Miss Ingate was at tea.
“Oh! You are a swell. Where you been?”
“Winnie! What do you say to going and living on the right bank for a bit?”
“Well, well!” said Miss Ingate. “So that’s it, is it? I’ve been ready to go for a long time. Of course you want to go first thing to-morrow morning. I know you.”
“No, I don’t,” said Audrey. “I want to go to-night. Now! Pack the trunks quick. I’ve got the finest auto you ever saw waiting at the door.”
CHAPTER XVI
ROBES
On the second following Friday evening, Audrey’s suite of rooms at the Hôtel du Danube glowed in every corner with pink-shaded electricity. According to what Audrey had everywhere observed to be the French custom, there was in this flat the minimum of corridor and the maximum of doors. Each room communicated directly with all the other rooms. The doors were open, and three women continually in a feverish elation passed to and fro. Empire chairs and sofas were covered with rich garments of every colour and form and material, from the transparent blue silk matinée to the dark heavy cloak of velvet ornamented with fur. The place was in fact very like the showrooms of a cosmopolitan dressmaker after a vast trying-on. Sundry cosmopolitan dressmakers had contributed to the rich confusion. None had hesitated for an instant to execute Audrey’s commands. They had all been waiting, apparently since the beginning of time, to serve her. All that district of Paris had been thus waiting. The flat had been waiting, the automobile had been waiting, the chauffeur had been waiting, and purveyors of every sort. A word from her seemed to have released them from an enchantment. For the most part they were strange people, these magical attendants, never mentioning money, but rather deprecating the sound of it, and content to supply nothing but the finest productions of their unquestionable genius. Still, Audrey reckoned that she owed about twenty-five thousand francs to Paris.
The third woman was the maid, Elise. The hotel had invented and delivered Elise, and thereafter seemed easier in its mind. Elise was thirty years of age and not repellent of aspect. On a black dress she wore the smallest white muslin apron that either Audrey or Miss Ingate had ever seen. She kept pins in her mouth, but in other respects showed few eccentricities beyond an extreme excitability. When at eight o’clock Mademoiselle’s new gown, promised for seven, had not arrived, Elise begged permission to use Madame’s salts. When the bell rang at eight-thirty, and a lackey brought in an oval-shaped box with a long loop to it of leathern strap, she only just managed not to kiss the lackey. The rapid movement of Mademoiselle and Elise with the contents of the box from the drawing-room into Mademoiselle’s bedroom was the last rushing and swishing that preceded a considerable peace.