"Why, naturally!" replied the beauty, with a cool smile. "He follows me everywhere like a dog! Poor Lennie!"
Again the elder lady coughed significantly.
Clara Winsleigh broke into a ringing peal of laughter, and rising from her lounge, knelt beside her visitor in a very pretty coaxing attitude.
"Come, Mimsey!" she said, "you are not going to be proper at this time of day! That would be a joke! Darling, indulgent, good old Mimsey!—you don't mean to turn into a prim, prosy, cross Mrs. Grundy! I won't believe it! And you mustn't be severe on poor Lennie—he's such a docile, good boy, and really not bad-looking!"
Mrs. Marvelle fidgeted a little on her chair. "I don't want to talk about Lennie, as you call him," she said, rather testily—"Only I think you'd better be careful how far you go with him. I came to consult you on something quite different. What are you going to do about the Bruce-Errington business? You know it was in the Post to-day that they've arrived in town. The idea of Sir Philip bringing his common wife into society!—It's too ridiculous!"
Lady Winsleigh sprang to her feet, and her eyes flashed disdainfully.
"What am I going to do?" she repeated, in accents of bitter contempt. "Why, receive them, of course! It will be the greatest punishment Bruce-Errington can have! I'll get all the best people here that I know—and he shall bring his peasant woman among them, and blush for her! It will be the greatest fun out! Fancy a Norwegian farmer's girl lumbering along with her great feet and red hands! . . . and, perhaps, not knowing whether to eat an ice with a spoon or with her fingers! I tell you Bruce-Errington will be ready to die for shame—and serve him right too!"
Mrs. Marvelle was rather startled at the harsh, derisive laughter with which her ladyship concluded her excited observations, but she merely observed mildly—
"Well, then, you will leave cards?"
"Certainly?"