Lady Smith-Evered smiled knowingly. “He’s a very eligible young man,” she purred.
“He drinks,” Muriel remarked, shortly.
“Oh, but he has turned over a new leaf,” her hostess replied. “Didn’t you notice he drank your health in soda-water just now? He’s a very good sort. What a difference there is between him and that extraordinary cousin of his!”
“There is, indeed,” Muriel answered, with feeling.
The youth beside her had abandoned his attempts to feed her, and was excitedly filling his own mouth with good things, women and food being associated ideas in his pristine young mind.
“Did you notice how he apologized to me?” Lady Smith-Evered remarked.
“Who?” asked Muriel. Her thoughts were wandering.
“Mr. Lane,” she answered. “It was a great triumph.”
“Who for? You, or Mr. Lane?” Muriel’s heart beat as she asked the question, for it was meant to be a blow in defence of the man she was beginning to regard as her good friend.
Lady Smith-Evered was too befogged to divine her meaning. “It was a triumph for me,” she declared. “People generally find it better to be in my good books.” She made a menacing gesture to the company at large; and three or four young officers, not quite catching her words, but judging by her expression that she was demanding their approbation, nodded their heads wisely. “But of course he’s not quite right in his head,” she went on. “He has lived alone in the desert too much. Why, my dear, do you know what I saw him doing yesterday in the street?”