"Yes," laughed the girl again; "but I am quite certain he didn't tell his mother! We must really be civil and go back to hear him speak. His mother will think it magnificent, anyway. She probably wrote it for him. He's quite a nice boy—but—"
She shook her head over him, softly smiling to herself. The face which smiled had no very clear title to beauty, but it was arresting and expressive, and it had beautiful points. Like the girl's figure and dress, it suggested a self-conscious, fastidious personality: egotism, with charm for its weapon.
"I wonder what Lady Coryston thinks of her eldest son's performances in the papers this morning!" said lively little Mrs. Frant, throwing up hands and eyes.
Mrs. Verity, a soft, faded woman, smiled responsively.
"They can't be exactly dull in that family," she said. "I'm told they all talk at once; and none of them listens to a word the others say."
"I think I'll bet that Lady Coryston will make Lord Coryston listen to a few remarks on that speech!" laughed Enid Glenwilliam. "Is there such a thing as matria potestas? I've forgotten all the Latin I learned at Cambridge, so I don't know. But if there is, that's what Lady Coryston stands for. How splendid—to stand for anything—nowadays!"
The three fell into an animated discussion of the Coryston family and their characteristics. Enid Glenwilliam canvassed them all at least as freely as her neighbors. But every now and then little Mrs. Frant threw her an odd look, as much as to say, "Am I really taken in?"
Meanwhile a very substantial old lady, scarcely less deliberate and finely finished, in spite of her size, than Lady Coryston herself, had taken a chair beside her in the gallery, which was still very empty.
"My dear," she said, panting a little and grasping Lady Coryston's wrist, with a plump hand on which the rings sparkled—"My dear! I came to bring you a word of sympathy."