There was something in that large and airy bedroom which always did Mrs. Malwood good. She liked its Spartan simplicity, its white walls, white furniture, white carpet and the curtains and cushions which were of delicate water-color tones suggestive of sweet peas. It had once been wholly black as a background for Lady Feo’s dead-white skin. But her friend had grown out of that, as she grew out of almost everything sooner or later.
“New, isn’t she?” asked Mrs. Malwood without lowering her voice.
“A month old,” replied Lady Feo, “and becoming more and more useful every moment. Aren’t you, Lola?”
Lola bowed and smiled and once more put the hot tongs to the thick wiry hair which eventually would stand out around her mistress’s head like that of some Hawaiian girl.
“Where did you pick her up?” asked Georgie.
“She fell into my lap like a ripe plum. She’s a niece of my Breezy, the housekeeper. You’d never think it, would you? I’m more and more inclined to believe, as a matter of fact, that she escaped from a china cabinet from a collection of Dresden pieces.”
Mrs. Malwood perched herself upon an elbow and examined Lola languidly,—who was quite used to this sort of thing, having already been discussed openly before innumerable people as though she were a freak.
They little knew how closely Lola was studying them in turn,—their manner, their accent, their tricks of phrase and for what purpose she was undergoing this apprenticeship. Out for sensation, they would certainly have attained a thrilling one could they have seen into the mind of this discreet and industrious girl who performed her duties with the deftest fingers and went about like a disembodied spirit.
“Where are you dining?”
“Here,” said Lady Feo. “I’ve got half a dozen of Arthur’s friendly enemies coming. It will be a sort of Cabinet meeting. They’re all in a frightful stew about his attitude on the Irish question. They know that he and I are not what the papers call ‘in sympathy,’ so why the dickens they’ve invited themselves I don’t know,—in the hope, I suppose, of my being able to work on his feelings and get him to climb down from his high horse. The little Welshman is the last man to cod himself that his position is anything but extremely rocky and he knows that he can’t afford to lose the support of a man like Arthur, whose honesty is sworn to by every Tom, Dick and Harry in the land; this is in the way of a dernier ressort, I suppose. I shall be the only woman present. Pity me among this set of indecisive second-raters who are all in a dead funk and utterly unable to cope with the situation, either in Germany, France, Ireland, India or anywhere else and have messed up the whole show. If I had Margot’s pen, just think what a ripping chapter I could write in my diary if I kept one, eh, Georgie?” She threw back her head and laughed.