"Dear me, what modesty," Lady Caroom remarked, laughing. "To us, however, you happened to be very important. I hate a party of three."
Brooks helped himself to a quail, and remembered that he was hungry.
"This is very unusual dissipation, isn't it?" he asked. "I never dreamed that you would be likely to come into our little theatre."
"It was Sybil's doings," Lady Caroom answered. "She declared that she was dull, and that she had never seen A /Message from Mars./ I think that all that serious talk the other evening gave her the blues."
"I am always dull in the winter when there is no hunting," Sybil remarked. "This frost is abominable. I have not forgotten our talk either. I feel positively wicked every time I sip champagne."
"Our young philanthropist will reassure you," Arranmore remarked, drily.
Lady Caroom sighed.
"I wonder how it is," she murmured, "that one's conscience and one's digestion both grow weaker as one grows old. You and I, Arranmore, are content to accept the good things of the earth as they come to us."
"With me," he answered, "it is the philosophy of approaching old age, but you have no such excuse. With you it must be sheer callousness. You are in an evil way, Lady Caroom. Do have another of these quails."
"You are very rude," she answered, "and extremely unsympathetic. But I will have another quail."