Vanno laughed. "If you put it in that way, I don't. No, if we were on our honeymoon I couldn't tolerate a third, if it were an angel. But it seems as if every one must want you."
"Hush! People will hear you."
Just then a party of three Englishwomen rose, and descended from the tram to go to a villa in the Avenue de la Vigie. This exodus left a vacancy opposite the Winters.
"Shall we move over there, before the tram gets going too fast?" Mary suggested. "I feel Mrs. Winter would like to talk to us."
Vanno agreed. He was anxious for the invitation to be renewed. And in a few moments after they had begun talking to the Winters across the narrow aisle, his wish was granted. Rose told her husband that she had asked Mary to stay with them, and ordered him to urge the suggestion.
"You see," Rose confided to her opposite neighbours, leaning far forward, her elbows on her knees, "I always try to have some perfectly charming person in our one little spare room, while the 'high season' is on, or else the most terrible bores beg us to take them in. People like that seem to think you have a house or an apartment on the Riviera for the sole purpose of putting them up for a fortnight or so. It's positively weakening! We've just got rid of an appalling young man, whom my husband asked out of sheer pity: a schoolmaster, who'd come here for his health and inadvertently turned gambler. At first he won. He used to haunt my tea-parties, which, as we're idiotically good-natured, are often half made up of criminals and frumps. Extraordinarily congenial they are, too! The criminals are flattered to meet the frumps, and the frumps find the criminals thrilling. This was one of our male frumps: like an owl, with négligé eyebrows, and quite mad, round eyes behind convex glasses. He used to shed gold plaques out of his clothes on to my floor, because whenever he won he was in the habit of tucking the piece down his collar lest he should be tempted to risk it on the tables again. But at last there were no more gold pieces to shed, and his eyes got madder and rounder. And then St. George invited him to stay with us, in order that I might reform him. I did try, for I was sorry for the creature: he seemed so like one of one's own pet weaknesses, come alive. But after he threatened to take poison at the luncheon table, my husband thought it too hard on my nerves. I began to get so thin that my veils didn't fit; and George sent the man home to his mother, at our expense. At the present moment a soldier boy on leave—a Casino pet, whom all the ladies love and lend money to, and give good advice to, and even the croupiers are quite silly about, though he roars at them when he loses—is hinting to visit us, so that I may undertake the saving of his soul, and incidentally what money he has left. But he carries a nice new revolver, and shows it to the prettiest ladies when they are sympathizing the most earnestly. And he has no mother to whom we can send him, if he attempts to add his pistol to our luncheon menu. Do, do save us from the Casino pet, dear Miss Grant. I've been holding an awful aunt of George's over the young man's head, saying she may arrive at any minute. But you know how things you fib about do have a way of happening, as a punishment, and I feel she may drop down on us if the room isn't occupied."
They all laughed, even the chaplain, whom Mrs. Winter evidently delighted in trying to shock. "I should like Miss Grant to be with you," Vanno said; and this—if she had not guessed already—would have been enough, Rose thought, "to give the show away." "I should like her to go to you at once, since you are so kind."
"Kind to ourselves!" Rose smiled. "Will you come, Miss Grant?"
Mary hesitated. "I should love it, but—I hate to be rude to poor Lady Dauntrey."
"If I hadn't dedicated my life to a member of the clergy, I know what I should want to say about Lady Dauntrey," Rose remarked, looking wicked. "Can't you, Prince—well, not say it, but do something to rescue Miss Grant, without damage to any one's feelings?"