To the office Lucinda and Fanny accordingly repaired and—their knock being answered by a morose growl—there discovered Summerlad, in elaborate evening clothes, tilted back in a desk-chair, a thoughtful scowl on his handsome, painted face, with Jacques, a mild-mannered, slender young cinema sultan in riding-breeches and boots, sitting on the desk itself and moodily drumming its side with his heels. These got upon their feet in such confusion that Fanny was moved wickedly to enquire whether Lucinda or herself had been the subject of their confabulations. "And," she further stipulated, sternly, "what you were saying about whichever of us. I never saw two people look more guilty of scandal."
"It wasn't scandal," Jacques insisted with an air of too transparent virtue. "We had been talking about Miss Lee, though."
"Wondering if you'd care to be an angel to us, Linda."
"Look out, Linda," Fanny warned, "when a man begs a woman to be an angel to him, he's generally working her up to do something she oughtn't."
"What is it?" Lucinda enquired, laughing at Summerlad's dashed expression.
"I'm not sure you ought to, at that," he replied—"in your position, that is. But it'd be sure angelic of you."
"Help us out of the worst sort of a hole, Miss Lee," Jacques added. "I wish you would."
"But what is it?"
"Oh, nothing at all!" Summerlad assured her with a laugh that decried the very idea—"all we want you to do is forget you're a star, or going to be, and play a little part with me in this picture we're doing now."
"But how can I? I'd love to—you know that, Lynn—but we've no way of knowing when Mr. Nolan will be ready."