Guy bowed, feeling somewhat bewildered at her rich loveliness, and, with a swift glance from under her heavy eye-lashes, she shook hands with him.
"Mr. Gartney's friends are mine also--but you are welcome on your own account, Sir Guy."
"You are very kind," answered Errington mechanically, "I think the obligation is on my side, however."
"He's a fool," decided Mrs. Veilsturm in her own mind, as she looked at his fresh, simple face; "I can twist him round my finger, and I will, if it's only to spite his wife."
At this moment Eustace was seized upon by Mr. Dolser, who was on the look-out for copy, and, much against his will, was dragged to the other end of the room by the pertinacious little man, leaving his cousin in conversation with Mrs. Veilsturm.
The room was quite full of all sorts and conditions of men and women. Cleopatra knew everybody in the literary, artistic, and musical world, and they all came to her receptions, so that it was quite a treat to find somebody there who had done nothing. This happened on occasions when someone who had not done anything was brought to worship someone who had. There were plenty of lady novelists in all shades, from blonde to brunette, picking up ideas for their next three-volume publication; pale young poets, with long hair and undecided legs, who wrote rondels, triolets, and ballads, hinting, in wonderful rhyme, at things fantastical; dramatists, young and old, full of three-act plays and hatred of managers and critics. A haggard young man of the impressionist school drooped in a corner, discoursing of Art, in the newest jargon of the studios, to the last fashionable manageress, who did not understand a word he was saying, but pretended to do so, as she wanted him to paint her picture. Everyone present had an eye to business, and each was pursuing his or her aim with vicious pertinacity.
"Mixed lot, ain't they?--yes!" said Mr. Dolser superciliously, when he had got the unhappy Eustace pinned up in a corner; "don't they cackle about themselves too--rather See that stout old party in the corner, in the damaged millinery--new novelist, you know--disease school--Baudelaire without his genius--wrote 'The Body Snatcher' --yes!--read it?"
"No," responded Eustace, shortly, "and I don't intend to."
"It is rather a corker for weak nerves," said "The Pepper Box" proprietor, affably; "there's Gibbles--perfect genius as critic; always slashes a book without reading it. He's destroyed more reputations than any one I know. Yes! Ah! fancy Maniswarkoffi being here--pianist, you know. English, only they wouldn't have him under his real name of Grubs, so he went abroad and dug up his present jawbreaker. Draws money now, and smashes two pianos a week--beautiful!"
In this way Mr. Dolser artlessly prattled along, destroying a reputation every time he opened his mouth, much to the disgust of Gartney, who wanted to get away.