Mrs. Leveret moaned: “I don’t see how she could!” and Miss Van Vluyck said, picking up her note-book: “Some women stop at nothing.”
“—but if,” Mrs. Plinth took up her argument impressively, “anything of the kind had happened in my house” (it never would have, her tone implied), “I should have felt that I owed it to myself either to ask for Mrs. Roby’s resignation—or to offer mine.”
“Oh, Mrs. Plinth—” gasped the Lunch Club.
“Fortunately for me,” Mrs. Plinth continued with an awful magnanimity, “the matter was taken out of my hands by our President’s decision that the right to entertain distinguished guests was a privilege vested in her office; and I think the other members will agree that, as she was alone in this opinion, she ought to be alone in deciding on the best way of effacing its—its really deplorable consequences.”
A deep silence followed this outbreak of Mrs. Plinth’s long-stored resentment.
“I don’t see why I should be expected to ask her to resign—” Mrs. Ballinger at length began; but Laura Glyde turned back to remind her: “You know she made you say that you’d got on swimmingly in Xingu.”
An ill-timed giggle escaped from Mrs. Leveret, and Mrs. Ballinger energetically continued “—but you needn’t think for a moment that I’m afraid to!”
The door of the drawing-room closed on the retreating backs of the Lunch Club, and the President of that distinguished association, seating herself at her writing-table, and pushing away a copy of “The Wings of Death” to make room for her elbow, drew forth a sheet of the club’s note-paper, on which she began to write: “My dear Mrs. Roby—”