“Shopping at Mason’s,” interrupted Lady Hampshire. “My dear friend, she is mine. She was going to tell me all about it this afternoon, only I had to come over here to see about Agatha.”
Again Colonel Ascot exploded with laughter.
“But she told me about it yesterday,” he said, “and I had already drafted a short letter to her from Martin Sampson.”
Lady Hampshire was annoyed at this, since the Duchess was so very rich and so very silly.
“I don’t know what we can do,” she said; “we can’t appoint an arbitrator, can we? No arbitrator of really high character would undertake to settle the differences of two blackmailers. It is very important that an arbitrator should be beyond suspicion.”
“We had really better make it one firm, Cynthia,” said he.
She had often considered his proposal before, but never so favourably. Agatha need not be annihilated now; Agatha would probably grow even more tumultuously alive.
“Yes, perhaps we had,” she said. “Oh, yes, most decidedly!”
So they lived happily and wealthily and amazingly for another twenty-four years—there is much yet that might be said about them.