"And does this girl come from Earl's Court?" inquired Mrs. Futvoye, who was now thoroughly awake.
"Oh dear, no," said Horace; "I engaged her at—at Harrod's—the Entertainment Bureau. They told me there she was rather good—struck out a line of her own, don't you know. But perfectly correct; she—she only does this to support an invalid aunt."
These statements were, as he felt even in making them, not only gratuitous, but utterly unconvincing, but he had arrived at that condition in which a man discovers with terror the unsuspected amount of mendacity latent in his system.
"I should have thought there were other ways of supporting invalid aunts," remarked Mrs. Futvoye. "What is this young lady's name?"
"Tinkler," said Horace, on the spur of the moment. "Miss Clementine Tinkler."
"But surely she is a foreigner?"
"Mademoiselle, I ought to have said. And Tinkla—with an 'a,' you know. I believe her mother was of Arabian extraction—but I really don't know," explained Horace, conscious that Sylvia had withdrawn her hand from his, and was regarding him with covert anxiety.
"I really must put a stop to this," he thought.
"You're getting bored by all this, darling," he said aloud; "so am I. I'll tell them to go." And he rose and held out his hand as a sign that the dance should cease.
It ceased at once; but, to his unspeakable horror, the dancer crossed the floor with a swift jingling rush, and sank in a gauzy heap at his feet, seizing his hand in both hers and covering it with kisses, while she murmured speeches in some tongue unknown to him.