“Does she get a living at that?”
“My dear, don’t ask me to probe the mysteries of a woman’s income,” exclaimed her hostess with a laugh. “She’s pretty, and evidently she finds sandals and mystic gowns useful. When a woman’s not sufficiently original to get money or notoriety by her brains, she often achieves both through her fads. Philippa is one of those young women who will always be ‘taken up’ by some one. Silly spinsters of uncertain age have a habit of doing it. She’s just been living with one of them who adored her—thought her a transcendent genius instead of a clever little humbug. Now the smash has come. If you mention Miss Wetherby to Philippa, she looks pained and sighs: ‘It is so sad to lose one’s illusions. Miss Wetherby is not quite the fine woman I thought her.’ What Miss Wetherby says about Philippa, I don’t know—I’m not acquainted with the lady—but I can guess. There used to be a man about. What’s become of him now I don’t know. Another illusion gone, possibly. Philippa’s mysterious in more ways than one. But there, my dear, what does it matter? If you begin to be moral, you lose half the fun of life. I’m strictly unmoral on principle—unmoral’s such a good word, isn’t it? Anyhow I’m looking forward to the meeting between Philippa and Dick Mayne. He doesn’t know the type, and she’ll embarrass him so beautifully. I hope she’ll try to flirt with him. I think I shall scream with joy if she does. It will be too funny.”
“You know Mr. Mayne is going to stay with the Kingslakes?” gasped Mrs. Carruthers, placing edgeways with difficulty her little contribution to “the news.”
“No!” It was a piece of information that had hitherto escaped her aunt, whose manner of receiving it caused Mrs. Carruthers to bridle with importance.
“Yes, I happened to meet him yesterday at the Vezeys’, and he told me so. Why shouldn’t he?”
“Why, you know how desperately in love he was with Cecily.”
“But that was years ago.”
“When they were engaged? Yes. My dear, if you’d heard Robert’s ravings at the time! Heavens! how funny it was! He and Cecily nearly came to grief over it, because Cecily said Mayne was an old friend, and she couldn’t refuse to see him, which was, I believe, what the lunatic wanted her to promise. Robert’s my godson, and he’s good-looking enough to make me quite fond of him, but he’s a heaven-born fool for all that. Have you ever heard his rhetoric when he’s excited? You should. It’s worthy of a successful melodrama. He used to do the romantic hero-in-love to perfection. His feeling for Cecily was such that it was a profanation for any other man to touch her hand, and did I think a woman who allowed a rejected suitor to have tea in the same drawing-room with her, could possess that burning, white-souled adoration for her affianced husband which he required from the woman who was to bear his name? I offered him the impossible advice of not being a fool, and Mayne went away to catch tigers and fevers—and the public ear.”
“Yes, he’s done that,” returned Mrs. Carruthers. “He’s quite a great man now—the papers are full of him.”
“Mr. Mayne,” announced the footman at the door.