“I say, you know,” he urged, “there’s no need to be ratty. I mean to say——”
Kay abandoned her policy of silence.
“Mr. Bates,” she said, “do you remember a boy who was at school with you named Shotter?”
“Sam Shotter?” said Claude, delighted at her chattiness. “Oh, yes, rather. I remember Sam Shotter. Rather a bad show, that. I saw him the other night and he was absolutely——”
“He’s coming here in a minute or two. And if he finds you sitting on this lounge and I explain to him that you have been annoying me, he will probably tear you into little bits. I should go, if I were you.”
Claude Bates went. Indeed, the verb but feebly expresses the celerity of his movement. One moment he was lolling on the lounge; the next he had ceased to be and the lobby was absolutely free from him. Kay, looking over her shoulder into the grill-room, observed him drop into a chair and mop his forehead with a handkerchief.
She returned to her thoughts.
The advent of Claude had given them a new turn; or, rather, it had brought prominently before her mind what until then had only lurked at the back of it—the matter of Willoughby Braddock’s financial status. Willoughby Braddock was a very rich man; the girl who became Mrs. Willoughby Braddock would be a very rich woman. She would, that is to say, step automatically into a position in life where the prowling Claude Bateses of the world would cease to be an annoyance. And this was beyond a doubt another point in Mr. Braddock’s favour.
Willoughby, moreover, was rich in the right way, in the Midways fashion, with the richness that went with old greystone houses and old green parks and all the comfortable joy of the English country. He could give her the kind of life she had grown up in and loved. But on the other hand——
Kay stared thoughtfully before her; and, staring, was aware of Sam hurrying through the swing door.