Still silence, but the ghost of a smile on the thin lips.
"Is she rich?"
Oracle again mute, whereupon the exasperated worshipper queries more comprehensively:
"Then what is she?"
Vague, enigmatic answer of the oracle:
"She is an Incomplete Madonna."
Otterburn stared in puzzled surprise at this epigrammatic response to his boyish cross-examination, and after a bewildered pause burst out laughing.
"You're too deep for me, Gartney," he said at length, blowing a cloud of thin blue smoke. "I don't understand that intellectual extract of beef wherein the qualities of one's friends are boiled down into a single witty phrase."
This reply pleased Eustace, especially as he was conscious of having said rather a neat thing, so glancing out into the brilliant world of sunshine to see how far they were from their destination, he lighted another cigarette and explained himself gravely:
"I am very fond of ticketing my friends in that way, as it saves such a lot of trouble in answering questions; if you asked me what I should like in my tea, I should not answer 'the sweet juice of cane crystallized into white grains.' No! I should simply say 'sugar,' which includes all the foregoing; therefore when you ask me to describe Lady Errington, I say she is an incomplete Madonna, which is an admirable description of her in two words."