CHAPTER XV
The Duchess, a few mornings later, leaned back in her car and watched the perilous progress of her footman, dodging in and out of the traffic in the widest part of Piccadilly. He returned presently in safety, escorting the object of his quest. The Duchess pointed to the seat by her side.
"Can I take you or drop you anywhere?" she asked. "Please don't look as though you had been taken into custody. I saw you in the distance, walking aimlessly along, and I really wanted to talk to you."
David for a moment indulged in the remains of what was almost a boyish resentment.
"I have to go to the Savoy," he explained, "and I was rather intending to walk across St. James's Park."
"You can walk after your lunch," she insisted. "If you walk before, it gives you too much of an appetite,—afterwards, it helps your digestion, so get in with me, and I will drive you to the Savoy."
He took his place by her side with a distinct air of resignation. The Duchess laughed at him.
"You are a very silly person to dislike other people so," she admonished. "If you begin to give way to misanthropy at your time of life, you will be a withered up old stick whom no one will want to be decent to, except to get money out of, before you're fifty. Don't you know that the society of human beings is good for you?"
"There isn't a medicine in the world one can't take too much of," David ventured, smiling in spite of himself.
"To the Savoy, John," his mistress directed. "Tell Miles to drive slowly. To abandon abstruse discussions," she continued, leaning back, "have you regarded my warning?"