Bowen pushed back his chair and rose, receiving from Peel his cap, cane, and gloves.
"By the way," he said, "I want you to ring up Lady Tanagra and ask her to lunch with me at half-past one. Tell her it's very important, and ask her not to fail me."
"Yes, my lord: it shall be attended to."
Bowen went out. Lady Tanagra was Bowen's only sister. As children they had been inseparable, forced into an alliance by the overbearing nature of their elder brother, the heir, Viscount Bowen, who would succeed to the title as the eighth Marquess of Meyfield. Bowen was five years older than his sister, who had just passed her twenty-third birthday and, as a frail sensitive child, she had instinctively looked to him for protection against her elder brother.
Their comradeship was that of mutual understanding. For one to say to the other, "Don't fail me," meant that any engagement, however pressing, would be put off. There was a tacit acknowledgment that their comradeship stood before all else. Each to the other was unique. Thus when Bowen sent the message to Lady Tanagra through Peel asking her not to fail him, he knew that she would keep the appointment. He knew equally well that it would involve her in the breaking of some other engagement, for there were few girls in London so popular as Lady Tanagra Bowen.
Whenever there was an important social function, Lady Tanagra Bowen was sure to be there, and it was equally certain that the photographers of the illustrated and society papers would so manoeuvre that she came into the particular group, or groups, they were taking.
The seventh Marquess of Meyfield was an enthusiastic collector of Tanagra figurines and, overruling his lady's protestations, he had determined to call his first and only daughter Tanagra. Lady Meyfield had begged for a second name; but the Marquess had been resolute. "Tanagra I will have her christened and Tanagra I will have her called," he had said with a smile that, if it mitigated the sternness of his expression, did not in my way undermine his determination. Lady Meyfield knew her lord, and also that her only chance of ruling him was by showing unfailing tact. She therefore bowed to his decision.
"Poor child!" she had remarked as she looked down at the frail little mite in the hollow of her arm, "you're certainly going to be made ridiculous; but I've done my best," and Lord Meyfield had come across the room and kissed his wife with the remark, "There you're wrong, my dear, it's going to help to make her a great success. Imagine, the Lady Tanagra Bowen; why it would make a celebrity of the most commonplace female," whereat they had both smiled.
As a child Lady Tanagra had been teased unmercifully about her name, so much so that she had almost hated it; but later when she had come to love the figurines that were so much part of her father's life, she had learned, not only to respect, but to be proud of the name.
To her friends and intimates she was always Tan, to the less intimate Lady Tan, and to the world at large Lady Tanagra Bowen.