"Don't try!" In a slower tone she added: "I don't in the least want to know. . . ."
"Well, she was an Egeria!" Tietjens said. "An inspiration to the distinguished. Mrs. Macmaster is all that. The geniuses swarm round her, and with the really select ones she corresponds. She writes superior letters, about the Higher Morality usually; very delicate in feeling. Scotch naturally. When they go abroad she sends them snatches of London literary happenings; well done, mind you! And then, every now and then, she slips in something she wants Macmaster to have. But with great delicacy. . . . Say it's this C.B. . . . she transfuses into the minds of Genius One, Two and Three the idea of a C.B. for Macmaster. . . . Genius No One lunches with the Deputy Sub-Patronage Secretary, who looks after literary honours and lunches with geniuses to get the gossip. . . ."
"Why," Sylvia said, "did you lend Macmaster all that money?" Sylvia asked. . . .
"Mind you," Tietjens continued his own speech, "it's perfectly proper. That's the way patronage is distributed in this country; it's the way it should be. The only clean way. Mrs. Duchemin backs Macmaster because he's a first-class fellow for his job. And she is an influence over the geniuses because she's a first-class person for hers. . . . She represents the higher, nicer morality for really nice Scots. Before long she will be getting tickets stopped from being sent to people for the Academy soirées. She already does it for the Royal Bounty dinners. A little later, when Macmaster is knighted for bashing the French in the eye, she'll have a tiny share in auguster assemblies. . . . Those people have to ask somebody for advice. Well, one day you'll want to present some débutante. And you won't get a ticket. . . ."
"Then I'm glad," Sylvia exclaimed, "that I wrote to Brownie's uncle about the woman. I was a little sorry this morning because, from what Glorvina told me, you're in such a devil of a hole. . . ."
"Who's Brownie's uncle?" Tietjens asked. "Lord . . . Lord . . . The banker! I know Brownie's in his uncle's bank."
"Port Scatho!" Sylvia said. "I wish you wouldn't act forgetting people's names. You overdo it."
Tietjens' face went a shade whiter. . . .
"Port Scatho," he said, "is the chairman of the Inn Billeting Committees, of course. And you wrote to him? . . ."
"I'm sorry," Sylvia said. "I mean I'm sorry I said that about your forgetting. . . . I wrote to him and said that as a resident of the Inn I objected to your mistress—he knows the relationship, of course!—creeping in every Friday under a heavy veil and creeping out every Saturday at four in the morning."