Where had she met this formula before?
"Oh, Mr. Hopworthy!" she responded with a smile, an automatic smile, self-regulating and self-adjusting, like the phrase that followed, "I am so glad you were able to come." And turning to her husband, she announced, too sweetly to leave her state of mind in doubt:
"Jack, here is Mr. Hopworthy, your aunt's old friend."
With her eyes she added:
"Fiend, behold your work!"
Jack grasped the stranger's hand and wrung it warmly.
"I'm glad you're out again," he said. "Now tell my wife just how you left Aunt Bates." And so saying he backed toward the door, for he could be resourceful on occasion. Two minutes later when he reappeared his face was wreathed in smiles.
"It's all serene," he whispered to his wife. "They have crowded in another place at your end. We'll make the best of it."
Perhaps it occurred to Clara that things to be made the best of were oftenest crowded in at her end, but she had no time to say so, for Pierre had come into his own again—Madame was served.
Jack led, of course, with scintillescent Mrs. Ballington, he having flatly refused to take in the Countess. Jack's point of view was always masculine, and often elementary.