"Hold your tongue, Philip! I will not have you so satirical. Where do you take it from? Not from me, I am sure! Hark! there is Goodwood going! That is his step on the stairs, I think! Dear me, Philip, I wish you sympathized with me a little more, for I do feel happy, and I can't help it; dear Adeliza will be so gratified."
"My dear mother, I'll do my best to be sympathetic, I'll go and congratulate Goodwood as he gets in his cab, if you fancy I ought; but, you see, if I were in Dahomey beholding the head of my best friend coming off, I couldn't quite get up the amount of sympathy in their pleasure at the refreshing sight the Dahomites might expect from me, and so——"
But Lady Marabout missed the comparison of herself to a Dahomite, for she had opened the door and was crossing to the drawing-rooms, her eyes bright, her step elastic, her heart exultant at the triumph of her man[oe]uvres. The Hon. Val was playing with some ferns in an étagère at the bottom of the farthest room, and responded to the kiss her aunt bestowed on her about as much as if she had been one of the statuettes on the consoles.
"Well, love, what did he say?" asked Lady Marabout, breathlessly, with eager delight and confident anticipation.
Like drops of ice on warm rose-leaves fell each word of the intensely chill and slightly sulky response on Lady Marabout's heart.
"He said that he goes to Cowes to-morrow for the Royal Yacht Squadron dinner, and then on in the Anadyomene to the Spitzbergen coast for walruses. He left a P. P. C. card for you."
"Walruses!" shrieked Lady Marabout.
"Walruses," responded the Hon. Val.
"And said no more than that?"
"No more than that!"