"I wonder if she knows—if he ever wrote to her?—they were such friends," the girl said to herself, with the cover pulled up to her small chin, and the big eyes that had overflowed for Loveland, staring through the pink twilight of her curtained room. What if it's true about that restaurant—if he were starving?
After all, it was no use to try and sleep again. Fanny rang for the prim maid her mother had imported for her from England, and demanded the tea and toast which that maid said all well-regulated English ladies took on waking. Then, as if on a second thought, she added: "Oh, you may bring me the morning paper. It must be "New York Light." If it isn't in the house, please tell them to send out for it."
But it was in the house. Mrs. Milton had been absorbing "Light" with her tea and toast; and when her telephone bell rang for the unfolding of Miss Coolidge's amusing plan, she said she would have a great deal of pleasure in chaperoning a "slumming party" to Alexander the Great's. She had an engagement for the evening, but she would break it in order to go. She quite understood that Elinor did not care to mention the expedition to Mr. Coolidge. Men had such funny ideas about things, and he mightn't approve, but it would be all right if he didn't know, and a great lark. Elinor was to ask the Comte de Rocheverte, of course, and tell him that Mrs. Milton had consented to be the chaperon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alexander's Busy Day
Elinor Coolidge's first thought after reading Tony Kidd's very entertaining "story" in "New York Light," went no further than the fun of paying a visit to Alexander the Great's, and being waited upon by the man whose supercilious airs on the Mauretania had made her feel "ready to burst with spontaneous combustion." She had hurried to telephone Fanny Milton, because a chaperon was necessary, and Fanny's mother was one of the few women she knew who would not care whether Mr. Coolidge's consent had been asked or not. Then she had thought that it would be nice to go with some particularly good-looking and distinguished young man, whose presence with her would prick the unfortunate Englishman to jealousy, and give him the sensations of an outcast dog, who sees another animal pampered with choice morsels, and collared with gold.
When Mrs. Milton consented to be the chaperon, it no longer mattered to Elinor that Fanny refused to join the party. Fanny was a silly, sentimental child, anyway, thought Miss Coolidge, who had asked the girl only for the sake of obtaining the mother. But, having got so far, Elinor's plan began to grow and take ambitious form. It occurred to her that it would be dramatic to collect the whole circle of girls (excepting little spoil-sport Fanny) to whom Lord Loveland had been attentive on board the Mauretania. Each girl must, if possible, bring a man, Elinor naturally picking out the best for herself; and the most desirable seemed to be Comte de Rocheverte, a new arrival in America, whom she had met for the first time a night or two after returning to New York.
Of course he wasn't nearly as splendid a person as a real Marquis of Loveland would have been, but (though conservative girls who preferred home products, and jealous girls whom titled foreigners didn't cultivate, called French counts "thick as blackberries and nearly as common") Elinor had a weakness for old aristocracies. Besides, de Rocheverte seemed to her of that dashing type which prides itself on doing anything to please a woman. If she asked him to play a certain part in her little comedy, she thought that he would carry it off gaily, whereas the rôle might not be to the taste of her American friends.
She sent a note by messenger to a club of which the Comte had been made an honorary member, to make certain of securing him. Then, his answer having assured her that Raoul de Rocheverte was "entirely and devotedly at her service when, where, and how she liked," she telephoned to the four girls she wanted for the adventure. Of these, one could not come; another could, but wouldn't, for the same reason as Fanny's (this was Madge Beverly); and the remaining two thought it would be "more fun than a wedding." Each would bring a man (Mrs. Milton also could be trusted to find one), and the party would therefore consist of eight.