"No," said Lucy, "I am sure Mr. Urquhart is older than that. But there's Margery Dacre. She might do."
Lancelot had his own ideas as to whether women counted or not, in omens, but was too polite to express them.
"Is she twenty-five, do you think? She's rather thin." Lucy exploded, and had to kiss the unconscious humourist. "Do you think we grow fatter as we grow older? Then you must think me immense, because I'm much more than twenty-five," she said.
Here was a vital matter. It is impossible to do justice to Lancelot's seriousness, on the edge of truth. "How much more are you, really?" he asked her, trembling for the answer.
She looked heavenly pretty, with her drawn-back head and merry eyes. She was a dark-haired woman with a tender smile; but her eyes were her strong feature—of an intensely blue-grey iris, ringed with black. Poising to tantalise him, adoring the fun of it, suddenly she melted, leaned until her cheek touched his, and whispered the dreadful truth—"Thirty-one."
I wish I could do justice to his struggle, politeness tussling with pity for a fall, but tripping it up, and rising to the proper lightness of touch. "Are you really thirty-one? Oh, well, that's nothing." It was gallantly done. She kissed him again, and Lancelot changed the subject.
"There's Mr. Lingen, isn't there?" he asked, adding, "He's always here."
"Much more than twenty-five," said his mother, very much aware of Mr. Lingen's many appearances in Onslow Square. She made one more attempt at her husband, wishing, as she always did wish, to draw him into the company. It was not too successful. "Lingen? Oh, a stripling," he said lightly and rustled the Morning Post like an aspen tree.
"Father always talks as if he was a hundred himself," said Lancelot, who was not afraid of him. He had to be content with Miss Dacre after all. The others—the Judge and Lady Bliss, Aunt Mabel and Uncle Corbet, the Worthingtons, were out of the question. As for Miss Bacchus—oh, Miss Bacchus was, at least, five hundred, said Lancelot, and wished to add up all the ages to see if they came to a multiple of twelve and a half.
Meanwhile Mr. Macartney in his leisurely way had risen from the table, cigar in mouth, had smoothed his hair before the glass on the chimney-piece, looked at his boots, wriggled his toes in them with gratifying results, adjusted his coat-collar, collected his letters in a heap, and left the room. They saw no more of him. Half an hour later the front door shut upon him. He had gone to his office, or, as he always said, Chambers.