“Good heavens, Jackie dear, I hope you have not told her that we—that mother will not receive her. How dreadful!”
“Certainly I have not. But she does not happen to be a fool. She has now been in London ten days, and as neither my wife nor my mother-in-law has left so much as a card on her, don’t you suppose she understands?”
“But surely you told her that I cannot go about?”
“You drive every day. There is no effort involved in leaving a card.”
“But—how like a man! One can hardly go that far and no farther. If this were only our house!”
Ordham drew his lids together. “If it were, would you receive Countess Tann?”
But Mabel did not flinch. “Of course I would, Jackie darling. I would even defy mother—we could go to a hotel—if only I felt up to it. But I am a wreck and mother takes such care of me.”
Ordham set his teeth and turned away, grimly reflecting that the one mental trait his wife possessed which compelled his admiration was the neatness with which she could deliver a lie. She broke off the heads of several geraniums and then cried out, as if suddenly inspired with a bright idea: “Let us go to the country to-day. It is too utterly heavenly to stay in town. Let us take a long drive through Surrey.”
“It is not good for you to take long drives.”
“Oh, it won’t hurt me a bit. We can rest often in those ducky little inns, and sit in the woods. It would be too delicious.”