“His wife’s best friend,” she said.
“And his wife’s best friend,” Grimshaw repeated calmly. They were shooting fast over bad roads between villas. Etta Stackpole may have shaken with laughter, or it may have been merely a “Thankee, marm” in the road.
“Well, it’s a damn funny thing,” she said. “Here’s our Dago God Almighty splitting himself to set up a bright and beautiful English family upon its respectable legs. What a lark! I suppose it’s out of gratitude to the land that gives him hospitality. He picks up a chap without a backbone and turns him into a good landlord. Then, when he’s made (I suppose you have made) perfectly sure of his morals, he hands him over to a bright and beautiful English girl ‘of good family and antecedents’ (that’s the phrase, ain’t it?), and she’s to run the dummy along till it turns into a representative Cabinet Minister—not brilliant, but a good household article. That’s the ticket, isn’t it?”
Grimshaw nodded his head slowly.
“And so the good old bachelor makes a little family for himself—a little harem that doesn’t go farther than the tea-table—with what he can get of Katya Lascarides for Sultana No. 1 and Ellida Langham and child for No. 2. No. 2’s more platonic, but it’s all the same little dilly-dally, Oriental, father-benefactor game; and No. 3’s Pauline—little pretty Pauline. Oh, my eye!”
She regarded the gates of the Park flying towards them.
“What is it the Orientals allowed? Four wives and forty of the other sort? Well, I suppose you’ve plenty of lesser favourites. Why not take me on, too?”
“Oh, you!” Grimshaw said good-humouredly—“you’d always be upsetting the apple-cart. You’d have to be bow-stringed.”
“I believe a sort of Sultan father-confessor would be good for me,” she said, as she gathered her skirts together.
The car had stopped near the dingy yellow Park wall, whose high gates showed the bourgeoning avenue and the broad, sandy road.