“Better not. They’re—they’re very busy.”
Connie ruminated. At the top of the stairs, she turned—
“Look here—do come in to me, and have a talk!”
Alice agreed, after a moment’s hesitation. There had never been any beginnings of intimacy between her and Connie, and she took Connie’s advance awkwardly.
The two girls were however soon seated in Connie’s room, where a blazing fire defied the sudden cold of a raw and bleak October. The light danced on Alice’s beady black eyes, and arched brows, on her thin but very red lips, on the bright patch of colour in each cheek. She was more than ever like a Watteau sketch in black chalk, heightened with red, and the dress she wore, cut after the pattern of an eighteenth-century sacque, according to an Oxford fashion of that day, fell in admirably with the natural effect. Connie had very soon taken off her tea-gown, loosened and shaken out her hair, and put on a white garment in which she felt at ease. Alice noticed, as Nora had done, that Connie was fast becoming a beauty; but whether the indisputable fact was to be welcomed or resented had still to be decided.
Connie had no sooner settled herself on the small sofa she had managed to fit into her room than she sprang up again.
“Stupid!—where are those letters!” She rummaged in various drawers and bags, hit upon what she wanted, after an impetuous hunt, and returned to the fire.
“Do you know I think Mr. Pryce has a good chance of that post? I got this to-day.”
She held out a letter, smiling. Alice flushed and took it. It was from Lord Glaramara, and it concerned that same post in the Conservative Central Office on which Herbert Pryce had had his eyes for some time. The man holding it had been “going” for months, but was now, at last, gone. The post was vacant, and Connie, who had a pretty natural turn for wire-pulling, fostered by her Italian bringing up, had been trying her hand, both with the Chancellor and her Uncle Langmoor.
“You little intriguer!” wrote Lord Glaramara—“I will do what I can. Your man sounds very suitable. If he isn’t, I can tell you plainly he won’t get the post. Neither political party can afford to employ fools just now. But if he is what you say—well, we shall see! Send him up to see me, at the House of Lords, almost any evening next week. He’ll have to take his chance, of course, of finding me free. If I cotton to him, I’ll send him on to somebody else. And—don’t talk about it! Your letter was just like your mother. She had an art of doing these things!”