‘You should not eat so much, Poppet!’ drawled Charles Annesley to a Spanish danseuse, tall, dusky and lithe, glancing like a lynx and graceful as a jennet. She was very silent, but no doubt indicated the possession of Cervantic humour by the sly calmness with which she exhausted her own waiter, and pillaged her neighbours.
‘Why not?’ said a little French actress, highly finished like a miniature, who scarcely ate anything, but drank champagne and chatted with equal rapidity and composure, and who was always ready to fight anybody’s battle, provided she could get an opportunity to talk. ‘Why not, Mr. Annesley? You never will let anybody eat. I never eat myself, because every night, having to talk so much, I am dry, dry, dry; so I drink, drink, drink. It is an extraordinary thing that there is no language which makes you so thirsty as French.’
‘What can be the reason?’ asked a sister of Mrs. Montfort, a tall fair girl, who looked sentimental, but was only silly.
‘Because there is so much salt in it,’ said Lord Squib.
‘Delia,’ drawled Mr. Annesley, ‘you look very pretty to-night!’
‘I am charmed to charm you, Mr. Annesley. Shall I tell you what Lord Bon Mot said of you?’
‘No, ma mignonne! I never wish to hear my own good things.’
‘Spoiled, you should add,’ said the fair rival of Lord Squib, ‘if Bon Mot be in the case.’
‘Lord Bon Mot is a most gentlemanlike man,’ said Delia, indignant at an admirer being attacked. ‘He always wants to be amusing. Whenever he dines out, he comes and sits with me for half an hour to catch the air of the Parisian badinage.’
‘And you tell him a variety of little things?’ asked Lord Squib, insidiously drawing out the secret tactics of Bon Mot.