'I've been talking to Vida Levering and that funereal sister of hers.'
'Oh, Mrs. Fox-Moore!' said Lady Whyteleafe, obviously disappointed. 'She's a step-sister, isn't she?'
'Yes, yes. Oh, I wish she'd never stepped over my threshold!'
'Why?' said Mr. Freddy, sticking in his [eyeglass].
'Don't, Freddy. Don't look at her. Oh, I wish I were dead!'
'What have you been doing? She looks as if she wished she were dead.'
'That's nothing. She always looks like that,' Lady Whyteleafe assured the pair.
'Yes, and she makes it a great favour to come. "I seldom go into society," she writes in her stiff little notes; and you're reminded that way, without her actually setting it down, that she devotes herself to good works.'
'Perhaps she doesn't know what else to do with all that money,' said the lady of the pearls.
'She hasn't got a penny piece.'