Before the company Annie had joined started on a tour, she had heard more tidings to distress her about the Braithwaite family. It was Aubrey Cooke who brought them this time. He was telling her that he had met their late companion, Gerald Gibson, at Mrs. Falconer’s the day before.
“Oh! Do you know her too?”
“Yes; I have known her much longer than Gibson has. He and I have long arguments about her.”
“I can guess which side you take.”
“I always take the part of a beautiful woman. And Gibson really does her cruel injustice. She might sit for the portrait of the favorite handsome panther-woman of the lady novelists.”
“I expected something more complimentary than that. I don’t call that high praise.”
“Don’t you? Well, I don’t know any pretty woman who would not feel flattered at being called a panther; most of them only get as far as to be like cats.”
“Now you are absolutely libelous! I know you will go on to say that panthers are as cruel as they are graceful, that they delight in human victims, and you might add, if you dared, that the pursuit of them was an exciting sport. And then you will ask if the parallel does not hold good.”
“Indeed, I shall say nothing so commonplace, Miss Langton. I always maintain, to begin with, that beautiful women are not cruel. It is not their fault if we crowd round them in such numbers that they mix us up a little, and hurt our feelings by forgetting us. I have a great advantage over most of my rivals in one respect—my appearance. I heard a lady call me the other day the nice, quiet young man who looks so stupid. She was asking a man named Colonel Richardson who I was.”
“Colonel Richardson?”