"Oh, but Mr. Gwynne, I'm not in that class! Now come up to dinner to-night, and I'll put on every diamond I have, and you'll see I'll look the better for it." She raised her hand. "But don't involve me in an argument—I can't hold my ground with you, you know—you're too clever for me—I remember the last time, when you demolished me utterly—you told me we didn't need money to get along—think of that, Doctor Vardaman, he actually told me we didn't need to use money at all, 'the circulating medium,' wasn't that what you called it, Mr. Gwynne? See how well I remember! And, Doctor, before he got through, he persuaded me, sure enough, that we didn't need money—I believed him—at least I had nothing to say!"
Now how, how, I ask the unprejudiced and fair-minded observer, how could any gentleman—of the name of Gwynne—come at so winningly simple a woman as Mrs. Pallinder with a low question of rent? "Pay or quit" indeed! The thing was inconceivable, the moment inappropriate.
"You will come to dinner, won't you, Mr. Gwynne? Mr. Peters, I've a crow to pick with you, for never bringing him. Oh, I know you hate society, Mr. Gwynne, but just for once——"
Steven faltered; he would have accepted the invitation in another moment—and if he had, who knows how this story might have ended?—but Doctor Vardaman intervened briskly.
"Steven's got to stay here, madame, I asked him first," he said, and clapped the other on the shoulder. Perhaps the doctor was a shade more cordial even than his nature prompted; he felt a great pity for Steven, and a certain shame at the cheap and flimsy devices by which his poor old friend could be overpowered. Mrs. Pallinder made a little mouth at him.
"You always have your way, Doctor, you've gotten the better of me ever so many times. You've got Huddesley, for instance," she said, not disdaining to bestow an oeillade on the servant as he stood before her, offering sherry in the doctor's little old trumpet-shaped glasses; he acknowledged the compliment by a respectful grin. "And I'm simply having the most awful time—you don't know of a good cook, do you, Huddesley?"
"No, ma'am. Hi don't know hanybody 'ere, ma'am," said Huddesley, with a faintly superior air; and passed on to Gwynne with his silver tray. It was true; he held himself apart from, and rather above, other servants. The doctor had often remarked it with an amused sympathy.
"Don't you? Isn't that a pity—I want so much to get settled in the kitchen before Mazie comes home—well, if you hear of anyone, you'll remember me, Huddesley, won't you?" Mrs. Pallinder held her glass in one hand, and shook a letter out of her muff with the other. "Mazie's letter, Doctor Vardaman—she'll be back in a week—she's going to bring a friend—the most English name—one of those hyphenated names, you know. Her father's one of the secretaries at the Legation. Where—oh, here it is. 'Muriel' isn't that English? But just listen to the rest of it!—'Ponsonby-Baxter.' Her father is Sir Julian—no, it's Lucien—no, Mr. Peters, I believe my eyes are failing—can you make out what that word is?"
Gwynne, after a solemn inspection, pronounced it to be Llewellyn.
"I notice all these young men read my daughter's handwriting a great deal better than I can, for some mysterious reason, Mr. Gwynne," said Mrs. Pallinder pointedly, to Steven, with her pretty laugh. And Steven actually laughed, too! Where was his animosity? Where his anathemas? He was at ease, mild, pleased, interested. In fact, Mrs. Pallinder, looking hardly a day over thirty-five, with her fresh voice, her softly bright eyes, her trim and supple figure, was an impossible sort of person for the rôle of mother. There was a charming absurdity in her continual half-humorous, half-sentimental allusions to her years and infirmities. "When they get here, I'm thinking of having a little company in the house, Mr. Peters," she went on, with a confidential glance that magically comprehended everybody in the room. "Some of the girls, like Kitty Oldham, for instance, and your cousin Marian, of course, if her mother will let her come—I always say, Mr. Gwynne, that it's no wonder all the girls in your family are so well-bred and have such lovely manners—Gwynne manners, Colonel Pallinder calls them—it's no wonder they're all that way, they've had such careful mothers, and such training! It's my despair—I'll never make Mazie that way! I should like to go to school to Mrs. Horace Gwynne myself for a while, only she wouldn't have an old thing like me around, trying to copy those beautiful, finished ways she has—the most elegant woman I know! I think a little party in the house like that will make it pleasant for Miss—Miss Baxter, I suppose we'll call her—the whole name's a little too much—Ponsonby-Baxter! And now the colonel says he'll have to have some men in the house in self-defence. Such a houseful of women! It bores a man, I really think—oh, now, you needn't look that way, Mr. Gwynne, you know it bores men sometimes to have too many women around. So we want to have some of the young men, too—of course you, Mr. Peters, and do you think Mr. Lewis would come? And then there's Mr. Taylor—the one you all call J. B., I mean. There're those three large rooms in the wing at the back, and the small one over the hall—plenty of room, don't you think so, Mr. Gwynne? You ought to know how many the house will hold."