“I may be a gentleman, but I’ve none of the habits of one.” Littlemore had a pause and then added: “I guess I’ve sat too much on back piazzas.”
She flushed quickly; she instantly understood—understood even more than he had meant to say. But she wished to make use of him, and it was of more importance that she should appear forgiving—especially as she had the happy consciousness of being so—than that she should punish a cruel speech. She would be wise, however, to recognise everything. “That makes no difference—a gentleman’s always a gentleman.”
“Ah, not the way a lady’s always a lady!” he laughed.
“Well, talking of ladies, it’s unnatural that, through your sister, you shouldn’t know something about European society,” said Mrs. Headway.
At the mention of his sister, made with a studied lightness of reference which he caught as it passed, Littlemore was unable to repress a start. “What in the world have you to do with my sister?” he would have liked to say. The introduction of this relative was disagreeable to him; she belonged quite to another order of ideas, and it was out of the question Mrs. Headway should ever make her acquaintance—if this was what, as the latter would have said, she was “after.” But he took advantage of a side issue. “What do you mean by European society? One can’t talk about that. It’s an empty phrase.”
“Well, I mean English society; I mean the society your sister lives in; that’s what I mean,” said his hostess, who was quite prepared to be definite. “I mean the people I saw in London last May—the people I saw at the opera and in the park, the people who go to the Queen’s drawing-rooms. When I was in London I stayed at that hotel on the corner of Piccadilly—the one looking straight down Saint James’s Street—and I spent hours together at the window there looking at the people in the carriages. I had a carriage of my own, and when I wasn’t at my window I was riding all around. I was all alone; I saw every one, but I knew no one—I had no one to tell me. I didn’t know Sir Arthur then—I only met him a month ago at Homburg. He followed me to Paris—that’s how he came to be my guest.” Serenely, prosaically, without a breath of the inflation of vanity, she made this last assertion: it was as if she were used to being followed or as if a gentleman one met at Homburg would inevitably follow. In the same tone she went on: “I attracted a good deal of attention in London—I could easily see that.”
“You’ll do that wherever you go,” Littlemore said—insufficiently enough, as he felt.
“I don’t want to attract so much; I think it’s vulgar.” She spoke as if she liked to use the word. She was evidently open to new sources of pleasure.
“Every one was looking at you the other night at the theatre,” Littlemore continued. “How can you hope to escape notice?”
“I don’t want to escape notice. People have always looked at me and I guess they always will. But there are different ways of being looked at, and I know the way I want. I mean to have it too!” Mrs. Headway prettily shrilled. Yes, she was full of purpose.