"Certainly. I'm tired of this sort of thing."
"Splendid! And what are you going to do? Something gentlemanly, I hope, such as selling bonds on commission. Gentlemen who go to work always do that, don't they, whether they're qualified or not?"
"You're a bit sarcastic, aren't you? I was going to sell bonds, having been solicited to do so, but I've changed my mind. I'm going to get a job with an undertaker."
They laughed, at first rather half heartedly, then merrily. For ten minutes they talked of the past, the present, and the future. He gathered that she had assumed the name of Downing for secretarial purposes only; that she kept herself very much in the background in Mrs. Scoville's establishment; that she had watched his social career with unflagging interest; that she was returning to her own home on the following day, with a check for fifteen hundred in her possession; that she expected to marry if the right man came along; that Mrs. Scoville had made her a present of the gown—and so on and so forth. They discussed the wedding and the hullabaloo it was to create. They united in deprecating the impulse which robbed the marriage of its natural sanctity, but they agreed that she was a lovely bride.
"And now you must go home," she said at last. The clock chimed a quarter after two.
"That reminds me," he said. "You said you were going to your own home in the morning, early enough to avoid the reporters, who are to be managed by Stokes. May I inquire where your own home is, Miss Pembroke?"
"We live in Princeton, Mr. Van Pycke."
"Princeton? Why, I was there four years, you know. Strange I never saw you."
"You forget we were living in Fifth Avenue or Mayfair until two years ago. The house in Princeton is all that is left of the Pembroke millions. It was my mother's."
"By Jove, I remember you came out three years ago. I—I was asked, wasn't I?"