"My dear child, you are looking worlds better than when I last saw you. You were such a wreck at Lady Mohun's ball; looked as if you ought to have been in bed, doing a rest cure—a ghost in a diamond tiara. I find that when a woman is looking ill diamonds always make her look worse; but to-night you are charming. That emerald bandeau suits you better than the thing you wore at the ball. You haven't the aquiline profile that can carry off an all-round crown."
Claude and Lady Susan came in together.
"My car nearly collided with his taxi," said Lady Susie, when she had embraced her friend; "but I was very glad to see a man at your door. From what you said this morning, I expected a hen-party. Now a big hen-party is capital fun; but for three women to sit at meat alone! The idea opens an immeasurable vista of boredom. I always feel as if I must draw the butler into the conversation, and bandy an occasional joke with the footmen. No doubt they could be immensely funny if one would let them."
"It was an after-thought," said Claude. "Vera took fright at the eleventh hour, and admitted the serpent into her paradise."
"No doubt Adam and Eve were dull—a perpetual tête-à-tête, tempered by tame lions, must soon have palled; but at least it was better than three women, yawning in each other's faces, after exhausting the latest scandal."
"I think the early dinner in 'Paradise Lost' quite the dullest meal on record," said Claude. "To begin with, it was vegetarian and non-alcoholic. A man and his wife—the wife waiting at table—and one prosy guest monologuing from the eggs to the apples."
"There is no mention of eggs. I don't think they had anything so comfortable as a poultry yard in Eden; no buff Orpingtons, or white Wyandottes, only eagles and nightingales," said Susie, and at this moment the butler announced dinner in a confidential murmur, as if it were a State secret. He was neither stout nor elderly; but in his tall slimness and grave countenance there was a dignity that would have reduced the most emancipated of matrons to good behaviour.
"I should never dare to draw him into the conversation," whispered Susie, as Claude offered his arm to Lady Okehampton. "Nothing would tempt that perfect creature to a breach of etiquette."
The hen-dinner, relieved by one man, was charming. Not too long a dinner; for one of the discoveries of this easy-going century is that people don't want to sit for an hour and a half steeping themselves in the savour of expensive food, while solemn men in plush and silk stockings stalk behind their back in an endless procession, carrying dishes whose contents are coldly glanced at and coldly refused. The dinner was short, but perfect: too short for the talk, which was gay and animated from start to finish.
Lady Susan and Mr. Rutherford were the talkers, Vera and her aunt only coming in occasionally: Lady Okehampton with a comfortable common-sense that was meant to keep the rodomontade within bounds.