“Well, Cis, how are you getting on?” I asked her, when the door was closed between us and them. “Foot’s all right, I see, and you said you’d gone back to work?”
“Yes, but not at Chérisette’s, you know; I’m working opposite in Bond Street; Madame Lamaire’s. Mr. Vandeleur got me an introduction from his married sister, who knows her; and I’m getting a better salary, and such a much better time, there. He has been so awfully kind, Tots!”
“Has he? Have you—been seeing a good deal of him, then?”
“He’s been here several times, but”—reproachfully—“only to talk about you!”
“Good of him,” I said.
Cicely looked more reproach. “Well, he says you’ve taken all the colour out of his life and left ‘gold tarnished and the grey above the green.’”
“Drat him! And his colours!” I quoted Mrs. Skinner vulgarly and vindictively. “He’d plenty of them left in his tie, anyhow.”
“I am afraid,” said Cecily aloofly and with a pointed comparison in her face, “that you’ve scarcely realized Mr. Vandeleur.”
“Haven’t I? Well, the sort of man who, when he’s turned down by one girl, must needs rush and pour it all out into the shell-like ear of the next——” But I broke off here.