CHAPTER XI
"My dears," Lady Amesbury said, as she stood surrounded by her guests on the hearth rug of her drawing-room, "you know what my Sunday night dinner parties are—all sorts and plenty of them, and never a dull man or a plain woman if I can help it. To-night I've got a new man. He's not much to look at, but they tell me he's a multimillionaire and making all the poor people of the country miserable. He's doing something about making bread dearer. I never did understand these things."
"Heavens, you don't mean Peter Phipps!" Sarah exclaimed.
"His very name," her aunt declared. "How did you guess it, my dear? Here he is. Be quiet, all of you, and watch Grover announce him. He's such a snob—Grover. He hates a Mister, anyhow, and 'Peter Phipps' will dislocate his tongue."
Lady Amesbury was disappointed. Grover had marched with the times, and the presence of a millionaire made itself felt. His announcement was sonorous and respectful. Mr. Peter Phipps made his bow to his hostess under completely auspicious circumstances.
"So kind of you not to forget, Mr. Phipps," she murmured. "My Sunday parties are always viva voce invitations, and what between not remembering whom I've asked, and not knowing whether those I've asked will remember, I generally find it horribly difficult to arrange the places. We are all right tonight, though. Only two missing. Who are they, Sarah?"
"Josephine and Mr. Wingate," Sarah replied, with a covert glance at Phipps.
"Of course! And thank goodness, here they are! Together, too! If there's anything I love, it's to start one of my dinners with a scandal. Josephine, did you bring Mr. Wingate or did he bring you?"
Josephine laughed. Then she saw Phipps standing in the background and she raised her voice a little.
"Mr. Wingate called for me," she explained. "Taxis are so scarce in our part of the world on Sunday nights, and when one does happen to know a man who makes enough money on Friday to buy a fleet of motor-cars on Saturday—"