"Oh, exactly," replied Carew.
And the interesting conversation was interrupted by Chloe and Ethel. But Penelope said to herself that they were all dears.
"Mr. Williams is greatly improved," she murmured happily. "And Mr. Carew looks more healthy and less engrossed in himself. I was awfully glad to hear Mr. Gordon speak like that about a peaceful life."
And Williams slipped Carew on the door-step and went to his club. He roared of war till two o'clock in the morning, and then got three out-of-work war correspondents in the corner and told them the great story of his love. But Jimmy went down to Chelsea, and damned modelling in clay to other impressionist painters, and had a real good time. As for Gordon of the "deep green vale," he went home and found a clerk waiting with a bundle of cables from all quarters of the mining globe. He sent a wire to Bramber to be let off an engagement to hear a debate on drains.
On the whole, every one was tolerably happy, if we do not include Titania and the retriever who howled at nights.
CHAPTER VII.
It is possible that Penelope never enjoyed herself so much as she did at this period. She was so busy that she had no time to worry; her team took all her time. She was young, she was beautiful, she was adored, she was popular, she was even notorious. A dozen reporters dogged her footsteps, and when they lost her they followed her lovers. They haunted her door-step armed with kodaks; they invented paragraphs; they hunted her men and her maids. They made love to the girls, and seduced the men into neighbouring bars. One newspaper man, who belonged to the Mayfair Daily, got into her establishment as a footman, and was discovered by the butler drawing Penelope at dinner when he should have been drawing corks. A search in his clothes revealed some pencils and a note-book and another book of drawings. They were of such a character that the reporter was put outside into the street. The butler could have forgiven the sketch of his mistress: there was one of himself that no man could forgive.
The great desire of all these men was to spot the winner. Penelope's maid, Harriet Weekes, who was more or less engaged to Timothy Bunting, the groom (a sad mésalliance, by the way), found it impossible to go out without being accosted respectfully by a new admirer, who tried to lead the conversation around to her mistress.
"If you please, my lady, another of them spoke to me to-day. I hope, my lady, you don't think it my fault," said Weekes.
"What do they say?" asked Penelope, curiously. She took great interest in the manners and customs of other classes, perhaps with a view of altering them when she got time.