As she sat with her eyes fastened reflectively on her visitor, she rapidly made up her mind that he should marry Angel. The "talk" would eventually blow over; in fact, if she were to dress herself up as a Japanese, or a negress, and go to the club, the talk would instantly be diverted to herself. So much for talk! Here was a tide in Philip's affairs and Angel's, and she resolved to take it at the flood.
"I think you and Angel would be an ideal couple," she said. "I'm sure you would make her happy."
"What!" he exclaimed, struggling back out of a day dream; "you are not in earnest?"
"You would be April and July."
"No, but a March hare, and a Michaelmas goose," he retorted, scornfully. "I'm much too old for her."
Mrs. Gordon made no effort to combat this statement—her husband was seventeen years her senior. Was not her bleak married life an awful warning to other girls?
"She would have someone to lean on," she resumed; "someone to guide her."
"I'm not sure that she'd care about that," her visitor protested, with a short laugh.
"She always—liked you—she likes you still. The king can do no wrong," she urged, insistently.
"He would do her a great wrong if he asked her to be his queen to silence lying tongues. A gay young fellow of five-and-twenty, who dances well and is a good polo player, is far more in Angel's line that I am—even supposing she would have me—which she would not." Here Mrs. Gordon made a gesture of dissent. "I'm too settled in my ways. After a man passes the twenties, and gets on into the thirties without marrying, he does not want a wife—she's a sort of extra."