"Why, are you a member of that? I'm a member, too. It's getting a great club now, what with Ellaline Rand (Andrew Dibdin, you know) and Frank Maddox and Lillie Dulcimer. I wonder we haven't met there."
"I'm so taken up with my own club," explained Lillie.
"Naturally. But you must come and dine with me some evening at the Lady Travellers'—snug little club—much cosier than the Junior Widows', and they give you a better bottle of wine, and then the decorations are so sweetly pretty. The only advantage the Junior Widows' has over the Lady Travellers' is the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors, which makes it much nicer when you have men to dinner. I always ask them there."
"Why, are you allowed to have men?" asked Miss Jack.
"Certainly—in the dining and smoking rooms. Then of course there are special gentlemen's nights. We get down a lot of music-hall talent just to let them have a peep into Bohemia."
"But how can you be a member of the Junior Widows'?" asked the millionaire.
"Oh, I'm not an original member. But when they were in want of funds they let a lot of married women and girls in, without asking questions."
"I suppose, though, they all look forward to becoming widows in time," observed Silverdale cheerfully.
"Oh no," replied Miss Nimrod emphatically. "I don't say that if they hadn't let me in, the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors mightn't have tempted me to marry so as to qualify myself. But as it is, thank Heaven, I'm an Old Maid for life. Why should I give up my freedom and the comforts of my club and saddle myself with a husband who would want to monopolize my society and who would be jealous of my bachelor friends and want me to cut them, who would hanker to read my letters, who would watch my comings and goings, and open my parcels of cosmetics marked confectionery? Doubtless in the bad old times which Miss Jack has the inaptitude to regret, marriage was the key to comparative freedom, but in these days when woman has at last emancipated herself from the thraldom of mothers, it would be the height of folly to replace them by husbands. Will you tell me, Miss Jack, what marriage has to offer to a woman like me?"
"Nothing," replied Miss Jack.