“Forgive me,” he said, intoxicatingly flattered. “I do appreciate it. I didn’t know. I came for a cup of tea, with no idea of fighting for it.”
“Then let me give it you. Do you take sugar?”
And she handed him the cup, which he took with a hand that trembled. Then a press of fresh people cut him off from her, and she made no effort to keep him by her side. Gloom invaded his breast again. He had to speak to some of the crowd, and he did his duty with ill grace. He feared it would be too presumptuous to outstay the intrusive crew, so he resolved to escape as soon as possible. But Herbert captured him with a hearty hand-shake, and introduced him—with a certain proprietary pride—to his bevy of dames, and he was perforce added to the applausive circle in the centre of which Herbert quizzed the rest of the company and the universe at large.
“Isn’t that Lily O’Reilly talking with Mrs. Wyndwood?” he said, catching Olive’s passing eye.
“Sure, and it is that,” answered Olive, permitting the eye an unwonted roguish twinkle. “She is talking about her new novel.”
“Wonderful woman,” soliloquized Herbert for the benefit of his galaxy. “She is more read by the superfine critics than any other lady novelist in London.”
“Oh, Mr. Strang,” protested Lady William Dallox, a petite, elegant creature with an air of having stepped off a decorative panel, “why, the critics all slate her awfully.”
“I know. But that’s her revenge—to threaten her reviewers with libel actions, so that they have to read her to see if she deserved their slatings.”
“You’re a saucy cynic, sir,” said Olive, laughingly.
“What is a cynic?” airily retorted Herbert. “An accurate observer of life.”