“What could one infer about a wife from a man like that? Except that she’d have a lot to put up with.”
“You know,—she’s a beautiful person, tall, slender, dark....”
Lady Beach-Mandarin turned her full blue eye upon him.
“Now!” she said archly.
“I’m interested in the incongruity.”
Lady Beach-Mandarin’s reply was silent and singular. She compressed her lips very tightly, fixed her eye firmly on Mr. Brumley’s, lifted her finger to the level of her left eyelash, and then shook it at him very deliberately five times. Then with a little sigh and a sudden and complete restoration of manner she remarked that never in any year before had she seen peonies quite so splendid. “I’ve a peculiar sympathy with peonies,” she said. “They’re so exactly my style.”
CHAPTER THE THIRD
Lady Harman at Home
§1
Exactly three weeks after that first encounter between Lady Beach-Mandarin and Sir Isaac Harman, Mr. Brumley found himself one of a luncheon party at that lady’s house in Temperley Square and talking very freely and indiscreetly about the Harmans.