She made him fetch a little table, she produced a pack of cards. She spread them out and she expounded. He was a quick study. By the time Mr Ffolliot came to take Mary's place he knew all the suits. By the time Mr Ffolliot had thoroughly confused him by a learned disquisition on the principles of bridge, Lady Campion's motor was announced, and he departed in her train.
"Surely Mr Gallup is a very absent-minded person," Miss Bax remarked to her aunt when they had deposited Eloquent at his door.
"I expect he's shy," said Lady Campion, who was sleepy and not particularly interested; "but wasn't Mary nice to him?—I do like that girl—she's so natural and unaffected."
"She always strikes me as being a mere child," said Miss Bax, "so very unformed; is she out yet, or is she still in the schoolroom?"
Sir George chuckled. "She's on her way out," he said, "and, I fancy, on her way to an uncommonly good time as well. That girl is a sight to make an old man young."
"She certainly is handsome," said Miss Bax.
Sir George chuckled again. "Unformed," he repeated, "there's some of us likes 'em like that."
Eloquent sat long in his orderly little dining-room where the glass of milk and tray of sandwiches awaited him on the sideboard. His head was in a whirl. She drank champagne. She gambled. She seemed to think it was perfectly natural and right to do these things. It probably was if she thought so. She . . .
Heavens! what an adorable wife she would be for a young Cabinet
Minister.