"Vera and I are connections. Her grandmother was a Disbrowe," Lady Susan told people. "But it is not on that account I adore her. I love her because she is romantic; and so few of the people one knows are romantic."
If asked where the romance came in, Susan was ready with her reasons.
"Can there be anything more romantic than the idea of a lovely, ethereal creature, who looks as if a zephyr might blow her off her feet, married to an ugly giant whose sole thought and business in this life is to heap up riches, a man who cares for nothing but money, whose brain is a ledger, and whose heart is a cheque-book? Can anything be more romantic, when one considers the woman she is and the man he is, and that they absolutely dote upon each other?"
"Provana may dote," someone would say; "but I question the lady's feelings. That an impassioned Italian should be fond of a pretty woman, young enough to be his daughter, and whom he married without a penny for the sake of her sweet looks, all the world can understand. But that Madame Provana worships her money-merchant is another story."
"Did not Desdemona dote upon Othello?" cried Susan. "At least Provana is not black, and adoration such as his would melt a statue. To be worshipped by a case-hardened money-dealer, a man who trades in millions, and holds the sinews of war when nations are spoiling for a fight, a man who is a greater master of finance than half the Chancellors of the Exchequer who have helped to make history! To see how he worships that child-wife of his! It is absolutely pathetic."
"Pathetic" was the pretty Susie's word for Mario Provana. She used the adjective at the slightest provocation. "You are absolute pathetic," she said, when he brought his wife a necklet of priceless cat's eyes set with brilliants, and handed her the velvet case across the tea-table as carelessly as if it had been a box of bonbons.
He was pathetic, impayable, stupendo, all the big adjectives in little Lady Susie's vocabulary.
Susan Amphlett was Susie, or Lady Susie, for everybody who knew her socially; and for a good many people who had never seen her little minois chiffoné nearer than in a photograph. People who spelled over the society papers in their snug suburban drawing-rooms, and loved to follow the flight of those migratory birds, the Mr. and Mrs. Willies and Jimmies, and Lady Bettys and Lord Tommys, who were always flitting from branch to branch, in the only world that seemed worth living in, when one read the Society papers—those shining-surfaced, richly-illustrated sixpennies, which brought the flavour of that other world across the muffin dishes and savoury sandwiches of suburban tea-tables.
Mr. Amphlett was something in the City! Or that was his description when people wanted to describe him. He was briefly described as "rolling," and yet a pauper, if you weighed him against that mountain of gold, Mario Provana, the international money-dealer.
"If ever Provana goes under, half Europe will have to go under with him," Susie's cousin, Claude Rutherford, ex-guardsman, ex-traveller, ex-artist, ex-lion-shooter, said, when he discussed the great financier with inquisitive outsiders.