“Susceptible?”
“That’s putting it mildly. All men can take flattery in gigantic doses. Robert lives on it entirely. He dined here last night. Incidentally he ate his dinner, but his true meal was provided by the girl he took down, who flung at him pounds of the best butter,—solid pounds. I blushed for her and trembled for him, but I might have spared myself the trouble. She’s too clever, and he has too good a digestion.”
“Didn’t his wife come?”
“No. He comes up to town ‘to read,’ if one may believe him. And I happened to have asked Philippa Burton and young Nevern in to dine last night—not a dinner-party—so I invited Robert too.”
“Perhaps she’s the lady who inspires the new style of writing?” observed Mrs. Carruthers, building better than she knew.
“She’s quite capable of it,” returned Lady Wilmot, “but they only met last night. She has designs on Nevern, I think, temporarily abandoned for Robert. She’s coming this afternoon, by the way.” Lady Wilmot laughed again. “I asked her on purpose to meet Dick Mayne. I thought they’d be so quaint together.”
“Why?” inquired her niece.
“You haven’t seen Philippa? She’s one of the most interesting objects in my collection.”
“Where did you find her?”
“Don’t you remember Major Burton, that seedy-looking man at Cheltenham? Retired, you know, on half-pay. Used to be in your father’s regiment. Well, she’s his daughter. He died some five or six years ago, leaving her next to nothing, and now she potters about. You know the sort of thing such girls do; tinkering with copper, messing about with furnaces to make enamel hat-pins, designing horrible, bleak-looking furniture, and so on.”