"Shade of Titian!" cried Jimmy Carew.
"Well, I'm damned!" said Carteret Williams.
"This is romance," sighed the De Vere.
"I'm—I'm—that's what I am," whistled Rufus Q. Plant.
"Imphm!" murmured Lord Bramber.
"Sapristi!" shrieked the French marquis.
Wasn't it enough to make them exclaim when it was reported all over London, and in the country, and in papers and cables to New York that Penelope Brading had sworn, with a great oath, that she meant to upset the holy apple-cart of all tradition (at least since Adam) by never letting any one know who her husband was! They knew her, and knew her word was sacred. Now let all unwhite men, all unrealities, all ghosts, all vain folks vanish one by one.
With one voice the "horde" exclaimed, as they set their teeth:
"Well, we don't care!"
What does this say for Penelope's faculties of distinguishing men from monkeys, and white from gray?