“I’m awfully sorry,” he said, “but the telegram I have just received affects all my plans. I must hurry away this instant. When will you be in town? Then I shall call, praying meanwhile that there may be no Ducrots or Devars there to blight a glorious gossip. If you bring me up to date as to affairs in Park Lane I’ll reciprocate about the giddy equator. How—or perhaps I ought to say where—is Porthcawl?”
“In China,” snapped her ladyship, fully alive to Medenham’s polite evasion of her blandishments.
“By gad,” he laughed, “that is a long way from Bournemouth. Well, good-bye. Keep me a date in Clarges Street.”
“Clarges Street is off the map,” she said coldly. “It’s South Belgravia, verging on Pimlico, nowadays. That is why Porthcawl is in China ... and it explains Ducrot, too.”
An unconscious bitterness crept into the smooth voice; Medenham, who hated confidences from the butterfly type of woman, nevertheless pitied her.
“Tell me where you live and I’ll come round and hear all about it,” he said sympathetically.
She gave him an address, and suddenly smiled on him with a yearning tenderness. She watched his tall figure as he strode down the hill towards the town to keep an imaginary appointment.
“He used to be a nice boy,” she sighed, “and now he is a man.... Heigh-ho, you’re a back number, Millie, dear!”
But she was her own bright self when she returned to the bald-headed Ducrot and the bewigged Mrs. Devar.
“What a small world it is!” she vowed. “I ran across Medenham in the hall.”