"We are so exclusive."
"So it seems. You exclude even me," grumbled the millionaire. "I can't make out why you are so hard to please. A more desirable lot of young ladies I never wish to see. I should never have believed it possible that such a number of pretty girls would be anxious to remain single merely for the sake of a principle."
"You see!" said Lillie eagerly, "we shall be a standing proof to men of how little they have understood our sex."
"Men do not need any proof of that," remarked Lord Silverdale dryly.
This time it was Lillie whom Turple the magnificent prevented from making the retort which was not on the tip of her tongue.
"A gentleman who gives his name as a lady is waiting in the ante-room," he announced.
They all stared hard at Turple the magnificent, almost tempted to believe he was joking and that the end of the world was at hand.
But the countenance of Turple the magnificent was as stolid and expressionless as a Bath bun. He might have been beaming behind his face, possibly even the Old Maids' Club tickled him vastly, so that his mental midriff was agitated convulsively; but this could not be known by outsiders.
Lillie took the card he tendered her and read aloud: "Nelly Nimrod."
"Nelly Nimrod!" cried the Honorary Trier. "Why, that's the famous girl who travelled from Charing Cross to China-Tartary on an elephant and wrote a book about it under the pen-name of Wee Winnie."