“I found your knowledge of the American Constitution perfectly rudimentary, and of course I could not condescend to talk to any man ignorant of the first principles of our government, and you ought to go down on your knees and thank me for putting you in the way of enlightenment.”
Every word Letty uttered startled Miss Maywood more and more. It was bad enough to see Sir Archy swallowing the huge lumps of flattery that Miss America so calmly administered, but to see him take mildly a hectoring and overbearing attack upon the one subject—public affairs—on which a man is supposed to be most superior to woman was simply paralyzing. Miss Maywood turned, fully expecting to see Sir Archy walk off in high dudgeon. Instead of that he was laughing at Letty, his fine, ruddy face showing a boyish dimple as he smiled.
Then there was a move toward the Casino. Somebody had proposed luncheon. Colonel Corbin and Mr. Romaine got up from their seats and joined the younger people. The Colonel, with a flourish of his hand, remarked to Mrs. Chessingham, “You have witnessed, madam, the meeting of two old men who have not seen each other in more than forty years. A very gratifying meeting, madam; for although all retrospection has its pain, it has also its pleasure.”
This allusion to himself as an old man evidently did not enrapture Mr. Romaine. His eyes contracted and he scowled unmistakably, while the Colonel, with a bland smile, fondly imagined that he had said the very thing calculated to please. Farebrother took the lead, and the party was soon seated at a round table, close to a window that looked out upon the gay lawns and tennis grounds. Then Letty had a chance to study Mr. and Mrs. Chessingham and Mr. Romaine a little more closely.
Mr. Chessingham was unmistakably prepossessing. He had in abundance the vitality, the steadiness of nerve, the quiet reserve strength most lacking in Mr. Romaine. There was a healthy personal magnetism about the young doctor which accounted for Mr. Romaine’s willingness to saddle himself with all of Chessingham’s impedimenta. Mrs. Chessingham, although as like Miss Maywood as two peas, yet had something much more soft and winning about her. She was, it is true, strictly conventional, and had the typical English woman’s respect for rank and money and matrimony, but marriage had plainly done much for her. She might grieve that “Reggie” could not go to Court, but she did full justice to Reggie as a man and a doctor.
Miss Maywood sat next Mr. Romaine, and agreed scrupulously with everything he said. This peculiarity of hers seemed to inspire the old gentleman with the determination to make a spectacle of her, and he advanced some of the most grotesque and alarming fallacies imaginable, to which Miss Maywood gave a facile assent.
“It is my belief,” he said, quite gravely, at last, in consequence of an allusion to the Franco-Prussian war, “that had the Communists succeeded in keeping possession of Paris a month longer, we should have seen the German army trooping out of France, and glad to get away at any price. Had the Communists’ intelligent use of petroleum been made available against the Prussians, who knows what the result might have been? I have always thought the few disorders they committed very much exaggerated, and their final overthrow a misfortune for France.”
“Great heavens!” exclaimed Colonel Corbin, falling back in his chair; but finding nothing else to say, he poured out a glass of Apollinaris and gulped it down in portentous silence.
“No doubt you are right,” said Miss Maywood, turning her fresh, handsome face on Mr. Romaine. “One never can get at the truth of these things. The Communists were beaten, and so they were wrong.”
There was a slight pause, during which Sir Archy and Farebrother exchanged sympathetic grins; they saw how the land lay, and then Letty spoke up calmly.