“He is fifty and has been married twice already.”
“Men grow more appreciative, not less so, as they get older. And Russians are sometimes fascinating. I remember one—Russians can be very wild and romantic.”
“I don’t want a wild and romantic husband.” Claudia laughed outright.
“No?—perhaps you are right. There is plenty of time, and I daresay a Russian would not make a comfortable husband. Well, child, I am glad if you are glad. I must meet my future son-in-law.” She made a little grimace. “It adds at least five years to my age, but I suppose I can’t ask you to consider me. I think he had better come to dinner one night. Look in my engagement book and find a night. Thursday—yes, that will do. Write down your name and Gilbert’s, and then I shall remember all about it. One or two of the family might be asked.” She gave her daughter a smile of dismissal. It was very sweet, if a trifle automatic, and it showed to advantage her perfect and natural teeth. Mrs. Iverson never kissed her children, but then she thought kissing between women ridiculous. The only thing she ever kissed of the female sex was a little toy terrier.
When Claudia went downstairs, relieved that the news had been broken, she found the book had arrived that Colin Paton had promised to obtain for her. She cut the string and dipped into it. It was a volume of essays that he had mentioned to her and that she had expressed a desire to read. Colin Paton never forgot things.
She looked from the book to the telephone and wished that Gilbert had found time to ring her up and just say, “Hallo! Here am I and there are you!” It would have seemed to make last night more real, more sure. Like a puff of wind it crossed her mind that the sender of the book would have somehow got in touch with the woman he had asked to be his wife the night before. Pat liked him. Perhaps he would marry Pat, she thought idly.
She was too keenly, too tinglingly alive for delicate essays that morning. Later on she would enjoy them. She put them down and picked up an illustrated paper.
The first thing that met her gaze was a portrait of Gilbert and a paragraph recording his right to such a distinction.
There was no one in the library, and she raised it impulsively to her lips. It was not a satisfactory kiss, for the paper smelt of something nasty and oily. Still the portrait seemed to bring Gilbert into the room with her. And this man was hers, this man at whom all the Bar was looking, was hers, hers, hers!