"Perhaps he'll buy her sixty," chuckled the broker, pleased with his technical wit.
"He'd better hurry up," said Miss Wabash, "for his life-line is short. He's had experiences though. May I tell them, Mr. Flint?"
"I give you permission."
"Well, then, you were in love once a long time ago, but there were reasons why you couldn't marry, and so you gave up the affair and have never really cared for any one since; but two or three women have been desperately in love with you."
"Mademoiselle, respect the seal of the confessional!" said Flint, smiling, but drawing away his hand with a quick instinctive motion which did not escape Winifred.
"Ho! ho!" called out Graham, "perhaps there is more in palmistry than I thought. Go on, Mamie, and give us the history of the Salvation Army episode and the Hallelujah lassie!"
Flint cursed inwardly, cursed everything and almost everybody, himself most of all. What was he here for? What if Graham was the chief stockholder in the "Trans-Continental," he was a coarse-grained sensualist, with whom no gentleman should associate. (This estimate by no means did Graham justice, but Flint was not in a [Pg 284] judicial mood.) Then this crack-brained girl with her foolish fake of a theory—and he had been idiot enough to fall into this trap, and now Winifred would think he had boasted of Nora Costello as a conquest, perhaps bragged about saving her life. Oh, the whole thing was past endurance! Meanwhile everything around moved on mechanically. He heard his host say impatiently, "My dear, if you keep that épigramme of lamb waiting much longer, we'd better give up dining and take to holding hands all round."
At this there was a general taking up of forks and a subdued buzz of conversation. It was rather a relief when the candle-shade took fire and Flint had an excuse for rising to seize it before the butler could reach it.
The dinner ended at last, though it seemed as if it never would. As he held aside the velvet curtains for the ladies to pass, Flint strove to catch Winifred's eyes, to judge, if he might, what impression Graham's remark had made; but Blathwayt held her in talk till the threshold was reached, and the curtain dropped behind her without a glance in Flint's direction.
She held her head a little higher than usual as she moved beside Mrs. Graham into the music-room. A wave of contempt was sweeping over her, as she reviewed the dinner, its gilding, its [Pg 285] gluttony, and its unspeakable dulness, and she felt that she had sold her birthright of self-respect for a mess of pottage.