“Why not?”
“Well, you’re young now. But what’s more gloomy than a restless old maid?”
“My dear man, don’t you fret about my withering. I’ve got a little crystal flask of the finest undiluted strychnine. I believe strychnine quickens the action of the heart. Verdict. Death from attempted galvanization of the cardiac muscles. No flowers by request. Boomph! as Mrs. Gainsborough would say. Ring off. The last time I wrote myself an epitaph it led me into matrimony. Absit omen.”
Airdale was distressed by Sylvia’s joking about her death, and begged her to stop.
“Then don’t ask me any more about the future in general. And now let’s go and be Epicurean at Verrey’s.”
After Jack Airdale the only other old friend that Sylvia took any trouble to find was Olive Fanshawe. She was away on tour when Sylvia returned to England, but she came back to London in June, was still unmarried, and had been promised a small part in the Vanity production that autumn. Sylvia found that Olive had recaptured her romantic ideals and was delighted with her proposal that they should live together at Mulberry Cottage. Olive took very seriously her small part at the Vanity, of which the most distinguished line was: “Girls, have you seen the Duke of Mayfair? He’s awfully handsome.” Sylvia was not very encouraging to Olive’s opportunities of being able to give an original reading of such a line, but she listened patiently to her variations in which each word was overaccentuated in turn. Luckily there was also a melodious quintet consisting of the juvenile lead and four beauties of whom Olive was to be one; this, it seemed, promised to be a hit, and indeed it was.
The most interesting event for the Vanity world that autumn, apart from the individual successes and failures in the new production, was the return of Lord and Lady Clarehaven to London, and not merely their return, but their re-entry into the Bohemian society from which Lady Clarehaven had so completely severed herself.
“I know it’s perfectly ridiculous of me,” said Olive, “but, Sylvia, do you know, I’m quite nervous at the idea of meeting her again.”
A most cordial note had arrived from Dorothy inviting Olive to lunch with her in Curzon Street.
“Write back and tell her you’re living with me,” Sylvia advised. “That’ll choke off some of the friendliness.”