“Suicide—the thought of suicide had occurred to him.�
“He ought to have swallowed a set of enamel evening buttons or a set of five jeweled tie-pins,� suggested the listener, “and taken leave of the world in an appropriate manner.�
“I won’t go so far as to say that he would not have done something desperate,� continued the man who was telling the story, “had not Mariette—who may or may not have suspected that things were getting to a desperate pitch—appeared upon the scene. ‘Poor lamb! thou art in despair’—thus she addressed Shelmadine in the affectionate idiom with which her native language abounds—‘confide in Mariette, who alone can restore the silhouette that seems for ever lost to thee. Seems only, Monsieur; for at the bidding of me, myself, it will return. A little condition is attached to the recovery of thy figure, my child—not to be carried out if I cannot be as good as my word. Passe moi la casse, je te passerai le séné. All I want, Monsieur, is senna for my rhubarb—your written promise to marry Mariette Duchâtel, daughter of Marius Duchâtel, druggist of Geneva, if within three months you recover your beautiful figure. What do you say? Is it a bargain? Will you be fat and free, or slim and no longer single? Speak, then! You agree? Pour sûr! I thought you would!’�
“And did he marry his lady’s-maid?� asked the listening man quite eagerly.
“He did not,� said the teller of the tale, “though he was very near it. Fortunately for Shelmadine, the girl he had met on the Dolomittenweg Promenade stepped in. She was an American, original, independent, and determined. When Shelmadine wrote—on Ordnance Office paper—to her in Paris, saying that Fate had stepped in between them, and that she never could be his, she asked the reason why. Not getting a satisfactory answer, she ran over to London to see for herself ... bringing her mother—a vast person, who wore a diamond tiara, mittens, and diamond shoulder-straps in the evening, and carried them in a hip-bag by day—with her.�
“The American mother is an appendage,� said the listener, “rather than a necessity.�
“The sight of Shelmadine, who had expanded like a balloon in the filling-shed since the happy days at Klümpenstein, was to Miss Van Kyper—Miss Mamie Van Kyper was her complete name,� went on the man who had been called Bonson—“an undoubted shock.�
“Of course,� agreed the man who was being told the story.
“They met at the Carlton Hotel, where she had engaged a suite of reception-rooms for the interview.�
“Not being quite certain whether one would hold Shelmadine?� suggested the other.