She smiled and then with a really serious air:
"Well, I do. I'm sorry I intruded, Jerry. I wouldn't have come for the world if I had known—"
"What nonsense you do talk. Promise me you'll come, Una."
"Ask Marcia first."
He laughed uneasily. "What a tease you are!"
"You ought to be very much flattered."
"How?"
"To be worth teasing."
Here they moved slightly away, turning their backs toward me and unfortunately I could hear no more. And so I sat listening to the group around Marcia, who was again enthroned at the tea-table.
I had not met the men, but they were of the usual man-about-town type, "Marcia's ex-es" somebody, I think the mannish Carew girl, amusingly called them. Among them Arthur Colton, married only a year, who already boasted that he was living "the simple double life." Besides the Laidlaws there were the Walsenberg woman, twice a grass widow and still hopeful, and the Da Costa debutante who looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, giggled constantly and said things which she fondly hoped to be devilish, but which were only absurd. This was the girl, I think, whom Jerry had described as having only five adjectives, all of which she used every minute. Channing Lloyd, a glass of champagne at his elbow, laughed gruffly and filled the room with tobacco smoke. I listened. Small talk, banalities, bits of narrow glimpses of narrow pursuits. I had to admit that Marcia quite dominated this circle, and I understood why. Shallow as she was, she was the only one with the possible exception of Phil Laidlaw who gave any evidence of having done any thinking at all. I might have known as I listened that her conversation had a purpose.