"I am not very fond of using other people's cars," she said.
"It need not be another person's car unless you like," he muttered.
She looked at him for a moment thoughtfully. Phipps was a man of brass, without sensitiveness or sensibility. Nevertheless, he flushed a little. Just then dinner was announced and Lady Amesbury bustled once more into the midst of her guests.
"My dears," she told them all, "I've forgotten who takes anybody down! Scrap along as you are, and you'll find the cards in your places downstairs. Pick up any one you like. Not you, sir," she added, turning to Wingate. "You're going to take me. I want to hear all the latest New York gossip. And—lean down, please—are you really trying to flirt with Josephine Dredlinton? Don't disturb her unless you're in earnest. She's got a horrible husband."
"I admire Lady Dredlinton more than any woman I know," Wingate answered.
"One does not flirt with the woman one really cares for."
"Hoity-toity!" Lady Amesbury exclaimed. "That's the real divorce-court tone. There was a young man—-I don't know how many years ago—who used to talk like that to me at the time Amesbury was Ambassador at Madrid and took up with that Lola de Mendoza woman. Neither affair came to anything, though. Amesbury got tired of Spain, and my young man married a rich grocer's daughter. Still, I recognise the tone. Here we all are. Now you play a sort of hunt-the-slipper game, looking for your places, all of you. I know mine, thank God! Now let's pray to Heaven the soup's hot! And don't any one talk to me while I'm eating it. The present generation are shocking soup eaters."
Wingate found Josephine on his other side and was happy. Phipps was just across the table. His hostess proceeded to give the latter some of her attention.
"Mr. Phipps," she said, "they tell me you've taken that scoundrel of a nephew of mine—Dredlinton—into your business, whatever it is. He won't do you any good, you know."
"I'm very sorry to hear that," Phipps replied. "He seemed to me rather a brainy person for his order."
"One for me," Lady Amesbury chuckled. "I don't care. If I chose to come on the Stock Exchange, I've got brains enough to ruin most of you. But I don't choose. I like to hear of the rest of you tearing yourselves to pieces, though. If you could keep Dredlinton out of mischief for a year, Mr. Phipps, I'd think you were the most wonderful man I ever met. He's a bad lot, but I tolerate him because I love his wife."