“So much the better,” he said more cheerfully. “It is a thing I have often heard doctors say, that society was quite undesirable. It disturbs one’s mind. One can’t be so exact about hours. In short, it places health in a secondary place, which is fatal. I am always extremely rigid on that point. Health—must go before all. Now, dear Miss Waring, to details, if you please.” He took out a little note-book, bound in russia, and drew forth a jewelled pencil-case. “The hotels first, I beg; and then the other particulars can be filled in. We can put them under different heads: (1) Shelter; (2) Exposure; (3) Size and convenience of apartments; (4) Nearness to church, beach, &c. I hope you don’t think I am asking too much?”
“I am so glad to see that you have not given him up because of Con,” said one of Lady Markham’s visitors, talking very earnestly over the tea-table, with a little nod and gesture to indicate of whom she was speaking. “He must be very fond of you, to keep coming; or he must have some hope.”
“I think he is rather fond of me, poor Claude!” Lady Markham replied without looking round. “I am one of the oldest friends he has.”
“But Constance, you know, gave him a terrible snub. I should not have wondered if he had never entered the house again.”
“He enters the house almost every day, and will continue to do so, I hope. Poor boy, he cannot afford to throw away his friends.”
“Then that is almost the only luxury he can’t afford.”
Lady Markham smiled upon this remark. “Claude,” she said, turning round, “don’t you want some tea? Come and get it while it is hot.”
“I am getting some renseignements from Miss Waring. It is very good of her. She is telling me all about Bordighera, which, so far as I can see, will be a very nice place for the winter,” said Ramsay, coming up to the tea-table with his little note-book in his hand. “Thanks, dear Lady Markham. A little sugar, please. Sugar is extremely nourishing, and it is a great pity to leave it out in diet—except, you know, when you are inclining to fat. Banting is at the bottom of all this fashion of doing without sugar. It is not good for little thin fellows like me.”
“I gave it up long before I ever heard of Banting,” said the stout lady: for it need scarcely be said that there was a stout lady; no tea-party in England ever assembled without one. The individual in the present case was young, and rebellious against the fate which had overtaken her—not of the soft, smiling, and contented kind.
“It does us real good,” said Claude, with his softly pathetic voice. “I have seen one or two very sad instances where the fat did not go away, you know, but got limp and flaccid, and the last state of that man was worse than the first. Dear lady, I think you should be very cautious. To make experiments with one’s health is really criminal. We are getting on very nicely with the renseignements. Miss Waring has remembered a great deal. She thought she could not tell me anything; but she has remembered a great deal.”