I felt that Terry's eye launched a dagger; but it was now my turn to be interested in the ceiling.
"Oh, how good of him!" exclaimed our hostess. "I do admire that in you, Mr. Tarrymore." (I couldn't help wondering incidentally whether the Countess would have had such frequent lapses of memory regarding Terry's name, if she knew that he was the brother of a marquis; but it may be that I wronged her.) "We shall feel as safe as if we were in a house when you are driving, now we know what kind of a man you are, shan't we, girls?"
Poor Terry, irrevocably pledged to blue ribbonism for the term of his natural chauffeurdom! I could have found it in my heart to pity him, had not the iced water come jingling ironically round at that moment. Let it then be upon his own head, with ice or without.
And this came of lunching with the widow of a Simon Pure Kidder! for I had no longer the slightest doubt as to the middle name of the deceased. With a brain almost cruelly clear and cold, I entered the lists with the lady's conversational gifts, and after a spirited but brief tourney, conquered with flying colours. My aim was to pin her down to something definite ... like an impaled butterfly: hers was to flutter over a vast garden of irrelevances; but she did not long evade the spike. I tipped its point with the subtly poisonous suggestion that all arrangements must be made in the hour, otherwise complications might arise. There seemed to be so many people who had been attracted by that simple little advertisement of mine, and really, I must be able to say that I and my car were engaged for such and such a date—preferably a near one—or I should have difficulty in evading requests for an intermediate trip with others.
The butterfly wriggled no more. Indeed, it hastened to assure the executioner that it was only too anxious to be comfortably pinned into place.
"When could you go, Sir Ralph?" the Countess asked.
"Day after to-morrow," I answered boldly. "Could you?"
She looked rather taken aback.
"We—er—haven't motor things yet," she demurred.
"You can get 'every requisite' (isn't that the word?) in the Nice or Monte Carlo shops, if that's your only reason for delay."