"It isn't the songs only, Sue. They want an agreeable woman who can talk well."
"Oh, I can chatter about most things; but I don't pretend to talk. I can keep the ball rolling."
"Do you know, Sue, you find me in a state of profound mystification. I never was so puzzled in my life. When I was leaving Italy I wired to my people to keep back all my letters. I was ten days on the way home; and instead of the usual accumulation of cards and things I find one letter—yours."
"People don't know you are in town," Sue suggested slowly.
"Oh, but they do; for I sent the announcement to the Times and the Post a fortnight ago. I really meant to be back sooner, but the weather was too lovely. I stopped a couple of days at Bordighera and at St. Raphael, and I was three days in Paris buying frocks. Not a single invitation—not so much as a caller's card. One would think London was asleep. Isn't it strange?"
"Yes," answered Sue, looking at her with an earnest, yet somewhat furtive, scrutiny, "it is—very—strange."
"Well, dear, don't let us be solemn about it. No doubt the invitations will come pouring in now I am at home. People have been too busy to notice my name in the papers. There are always new women for the town to run after. Wives of diamond men from Africa or oil men from America. One cannot expect to keep one's place."
"No," assented Sue. "Society is disgustingly fickle."
"But I am not afraid of being forgotten by the people I like—the really nice people, the pretty girls I have cultivated, and who make a goddess of me, the clever women, worldly but large-minded—all the people I like. I am not afraid of African competitors there. They will stick to me," said Grace, with emphasis.
Her friend could see that she was troubled, though she affected to take the matter easily. There was trouble in both faces, as the friends sat opposite each other, with only the spindle-legged Louis Seize tea-table between them; but the trouble in Susan Rodney's face was graver than in Lady Perivale's.