“My dear,” she said to Lucille, “you and I may as well retire in despair. Can’t you see the sort of woman Mr. Brott admires? She isn’t like us a bit. She is probably a healthy, ruddy-cheeked young person who lives in the country, gets up to breakfast to pour out the coffee for some sort of a male relative, goes round the garden snipping off roses in big gloves and a huge basket, interviews the cook, orders the dinner, makes fancy waistcoats for her husband, and failing a sewing maid, does the mending for the family. You and I, Lucille, are not like that.”
“Well, you have mentioned nothing which I couldn’t do, if it seemed worth while,” Lucille objected. “It sounds very primitive and delightful. I am sure we are all too luxurious and too lazy. I think we ought to turn over a new leaf.”
“For you, dear Lucille,” Lady Carey said with suave and deadly satire, “what improvement is possible? You have all that you could desire. It is much less fortunate persons, such as myself, to whom Utopia must seem such a delightful place.”
A frock-coated and altogether immaculate young man approached their table and accosted Mr. Sabin.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but the manager would be much obliged if you would spare him a moment or two in his private room as soon as possible.”
Mr. Sabin nodded.
“In a few minutes,” he answered.
The little party broke up almost immediately. Coffee was ordered in the palm court, where the band was playing. Mr. Sabin and the Prince fell a little behind the others on the way out of the room.
“You heard my summons?” Mr. Sabin asked.
“Yes!”