"Putridly off colour.... Walked in the Bois, and got a touch of the sun, I fancy!" Franky whispered back too loudly, drawing upon himself the Goblin's equivoque:
"The sun or the daughter, did you say, Lord Norwater? Dear me!" the Goblin shrilled; "you're actually blushing! You've revived a long-lost Early Victorian art."
"Was blushing really an art with the ladies of that dim and distant era?" asked the friendly Brayham, not in the least comprehending Franky's discomfiture, yet desirous of diverting the Goblin's glittering scrutiny from her victim's scarlet face.
"It was the art that concealed Heart—or assumed it!" Lady Wathe retorted, with a peal of elfish laughter, turning her tight-skinned, large-eyed, wide-mouthed ugliness upon the speaker, and nodding her little round head until the huge and perfectly matched diamonds of the triple-rayed tiara that crowned her scanty henna-dyed tresses flashed blinding sparks of violet and red and emerald splendour in the mellow-toned radiance of the electric lights.
The Goblin had meant nothing, Franky assured himself, as the angry blood stopped humming in his ears, and his complexion regained its normal shade. The bad pun that had bowled him over had possibly been uttered without malicious intent.... Yet Lady Wathe rented a gorgeous suite upon the floor below the Norwater apartments, and one of her three lady's-maids might have been pumping Pauline.... What was she saying? ... Why was everybody cackling? ...
The Goblin was launched upon a characteristic story. Its dénouement—worked up with skill and related with point—evoked peal upon peal of laughter from the guests at Brayham's table, with the sole exception of Franky, whom the anecdote found sulky and left glum. He said to himself that if Lady Beauvayse, née Miss Sadie J. Sculpin of New York, sole child and heiress of a Yankee who had made millions out of Chewing Gum, chose to forget her position as the wife of a British Peer, and mother of his children, by Jove! and scream at such nastiness, it was her look-out. If the big red-blond man who sat on Franky's right shook with amusement, as he recapitulated the chief points of the story for the benefit of the girl who sat next him, it was his affair. But that the Saxham, an unmarried girl, who oughtn't to see the bearings of such a tale, should openly revel in its saltness, made Franky feel sick—on this particular night.
He realised that he detested the Saxham girl, one of Margot's chosen Club intimates, more fervently than even Tota Stannus or Joan Delabrand; more thoroughly than Rhona Helvellyn; only little less heartily than he hated Cynthia Charterhouse. Big, bold, galumphing, provocative—in fact, so much IT that you couldn't overlook her—he found her more unpleasantly attractive than usual, in a bodice that was no more than a fold of shimmering orange stuff above the waist—tossing the panache of ospreys that startlingly crowned her, offering up her persistant illusion perfumes for the delectation of the appreciative male.
Only look at her, ready to climb into her neighbour's pocket. Leaning her round white elbows on the guipure table-cloth, half-shutting those long greeny-brown Egyptian eyes of her, wreathing her long thick white neck to send a daring challenge into the face of the laughing man. A big man, bright red-haired, blue-eyed, and broad-chested, showing every shining tooth in his handsome grinning head....
"She's screaming, isn't she, dear Lady Beau?" Thus the Saxham to her employer, friend, and ally, across the silver bowls of Rayon d'Or roses, her naked shoulder brushing the coat-sleeve of her neighbour, the big rufous man. And Lady Beau gushed back:
"In marvellous form to-night.... Don't you think so, Count? Do agree with us!" and the big man agreed, with the accent of the German Fatherland: