CHAPTER XXXIII.
HOW CONVERSATION GROWS RIFE AT THE TOWERS—AND HOW MONA ASSERTS HERSELF—AND HOW LADY RODNEY LICKS THE DUST.
"Where can Mona be?" says Doatie, suddenly.
We must go back one hour. Lady Lilias Eaton has come and gone. It is now a quarter to five, and Violet is pouring out tea in the library.
"Yes; where is Mona?" says Jack, looking up from the cup she has just given him.
"I expect I know more than most about her," says Nolly, who is enjoying himself immensely among the sponge, and the plum-cakes. "I told her the Æsthetic was likely to call this afternoon, and advised her strongly to make her escape while she could."
"She evidently took your advice," says Nicholas.
"Well, I went rather minutely into it, you know. I explained to her how Lady Lilias was probably going to discuss the new curfew-bell in all its bearings; and I hinted gloomily at the 'Domesday Book.' That fetched her. She vamoosed on the spot."
"Nothing makes me so hungry as Lady Lilias," says Doatie, comfortably. She is lying back in a huge arm-chair that is capable of holding three like her, and is devouring bread and butter like a dainty but starved little fairy. Nicholas, sitting beside her, is holding her tea-cup, her own special tea-cup of gaudy Sèvres. "She is very trying, isn't she, Nicholas? What a dazzling skin she has!—the very whitest I ever saw."
"Well, that is in her favor, I really think," says Violet, in her most unprejudiced manner. "If she were to leave off her rococo toilettes, and take to Elise or Worth like other people, and give up posing, and try to behave like a rational being, she might almost be called handsome."