"I can't pretend to dictate to my mistress what friends she is to receive——"
"Oh!" said the young man impatiently. "That's in your own hands. You know it is. This maid business—well, if I were your brother I should soon put a stop to it, but, anyhow, you know who's really at the head of affairs. You know that you must have a tremendous influence over this—this other girl. She naturally makes you her mentor; models herself, or tries to, on you. If she thought that you considered anything or any one undesirable, she would very soon 'drop' it. What you say goes, Miss Lovelace."
"Does it, indeed!" I retorted. "Nothing of the kind. It did once, perhaps. But this evening—do you know what? Miss Million has gone out in a frock that I positively forbade her to buy. A cerise horror that's not only 'undesirable,' as you call it, but makes her look——"
"Oh, a frock! Why is it a woman can never keep to the point?" demanded this young Mr. Brace. "What's it got to do with the matter in hand what frock Miss Million chooses to go out in?"
"Why, everything! Doesn't it just show what's happening," I explained patiently. "It means that Miss Million doesn't make an oracle of me any more. She'd rather model herself on some of the people she's going to supper with tonight. Miss Vi Vassity, say——"
"What! That awful woman on the halls?" broke in Mr. Brace, with as much disapproval in his voice and tone as there could have been in my Aunt Anastasia's if she had been told that any girl she knew was hobnobbing with "London's Love," the music-hall artiste.
"Who introduced her to Miss Million, may I ask?" he went on. "No, I needn't ask; I can guess. That's this man Burke. That's his crowd. Music-hall women, German Jews, disreputable racing men, young gilded idiots like the man in the cavalry who sent him to me."
Then (furiously): "That's the set of people he'll bring in to associate with you two inexperienced girls," said Mr. Brace.
And now his face was very angry—quite pale with temper. He looked rather fine, I thought. He might have posed for a picture of one of Cromwell's young Ironsides, straight-lipped, uncompromisingly sincere, and "square," and shocked at everything.
I simply couldn't help rather enjoying the mild excitement of seeing him so wrathful.