The Italian took in the forceful figure of the New Woman and smiled with her teeth.
'Madame Jennings,' she said, 'perhaps finds sufficient distraction in just ordinary life—and una tazza di tè. But we who are not so—comment dirai-je?—so self-complete must rely on frivolous things like una buona cena.'
'Don't believe in 'em,' reiterated the resolutionist; 'three regular'——
'Ah, c'est mauvais,' gesticulated Madame Carlotti, who alternated between Italian and French phrases in London, and kept her best English for the Continent.
'Mr. Pyford,' put in Lady Durwent, descrying a storm on the yellow and black horizon, 'has just written'——
'MR. H. STACKTON DUNCKLEY,' announced the butler, with an appropriate note of mysterioso. Lady Durwent summoned a blush, and rose to meet the ardent author, who was dressed in a characterless evening suit with disconsolate legs, and whose chin was heavily powdered to conceal the stubble of beard grown since morning.
'You have come,' she said softly and dramatically.
'I have,' said the writer, bowing low over her hand.
'I rely on you to be discreet,' she murmured.
'Eh?'