Schwankovsky joined them at this point in their conversation of cross-purposes. The music had fallen mercifully silent for the minute. Joan took the big man possessively by the arm. “I invited Hugh here to-night,” she began, explaining to him, “to see me. But he’s not interested in me. Only in some wretched little artist’s exhibition. I suspect he means to tackle you next, Michael.—Better first-hand than second-hand, Hugh.—But I’m warning you, Michael! Hugh’s on the prowl for strings to pull to-night. He’s all on the make—for the artist’s daughter.”
Having thus made things, as she thought, simple for her simple friend, Joan gave herself up to the arms of a new partner simultaneously with the reawakening of the electrola to a fresh burst of racket.
Hugh had not the slightest idea of how he had managed it, but, plainly, during their brief moments of contact he had irritated Joan beyond endurance. And now he must gather up the pieces of himself which she had left and be coherent for his involuntary host. “It’s only the Clare pictures I was discussing with Joan,” he explained. “I thought she had had something to do with your interest in them.”
“The Clare pictures! What do you know about the Clare pictures, if you please, Mr. Weyman? Or Mrs. Nevin, for the matter of that? Kindly tell me!”
The big man was openly annoyed.
“What do I know? Well, not much. Except, of course, that you’ve taken ’em on.”
“Who told you that?”
“Charlie Frye wrote it to us. Since then, we’ve heard nothing.”
“Charlie Frye! Young idiot! Now why should he go around telling this, when I particularly requested that he shouldn’t?”
“Well, of course, he had to let us know! Naturally we—”