It was so hot and glittering a day that every one was happy—hysterically so, perhaps, because the rain was certain to return, so that they were an army holding a fort that they knew they were not strong enough to defend for long. There were boats like butterflies on the sea, and every once and again an aeroplane throbbed above the heads of the visitors and reminded them that they were living in the twentieth century.
Millie, who adored the sun and was in the nature of things almost terribly happy, drew the eyes of every passer-by towards her. She was conscious of this as she was conscious of her health, her happiness, her supreme confidence in eternal benevolence, her charity to all the world. Victoria had been, before Millie made her confession, in a state of delight with her clothes, her hat, her parasol, her publicity and her digestion. Millie's news threw her into an oddly confused state of delight, trepidation and self-importance. She thrilled to the knowledge that there was a wonderful romance going on at her very side, but it would mean, perhaps, that she would lose Millie, and she thought it, on the whole, rather impertinent of Mr. Baxter. It hurt her, too, that this should have existed for weeks at her side and that she should have noticed nothing of it.
"Oh, my Millie, you should have told me!" she cried.
"I would have told you at once," said Millie, "but Bunny wanted us to be quiet about it for a week or two, until his mother returned from Scotland."
"But you could have told me," continued Victoria. "I'm so safe and never tell anything. And why should Mr. Baxter keep it quiet as though he were ashamed of it?"
"I know," said Millie. "I didn't want him to. I hate secrecy and plots and mysteries. And so I told him. But it was only for a week or two. And his mother comes down from Scotland on Friday."
"Well, I hope it will be a long engagement, darling, so that you may be quite sure before you do it. I remember a cousin of ours meeting a girl at tea in our house, proposing to her before he'd had his second cup, marrying her next morning at a registry office and separating from her a week later. He took to drink after that and married his cook, and now he has ten children and not a penny."
The music rose into a triumphant proclamation of Sir William Gilbert's lyric concerning "Captain Sure," and Victoria discovered two friends of hers from the hotel, sitting quite close to her and very friendly indeed.
Although they had been at Cladgate so short a time Victoria had acquired a large and various circle of new acquaintances, a circle very different indeed from the one that filled the house in Cromwell Road. Millie was amused to see how swiftly Victoria's wealth enabled her to change from one type of human to another. No New Art in Cladgate! No, indeed. Mostly very charming, warm-hearted people with no nonsense about them. Millie also perceived that so soon as any human creature floated into the atmosphere of Victoria's money it changed like a chameleon. However ungrasping and unacquisitive it may have hitherto been, the consciousness that now with a little gush and patience it might obtain something for nothing had an astonishing effect.
All Victoria desired was to be loved, and by as many people as possible. Within a week the whole of visiting Cladgate adored her. It adored her so much that it was willing to eat her food, sit in her car, allow itself to be taken to the theatre free of expense, and make little suggestions about possible gifts that would be gratefully received.