"My dear man, I am in the workhouse! My friends insist on patronizing me, and ordering all kinds of magnificence, and then they go away imagining they have done me a kindness. I never dine out without meeting at least one frock that's a bad debt, and you can't be brilliant when you are being eclipsed by a wretch opposite out of your own pocket. But what do you want? I can't come out to lunch. I am rushed to death. There's an awful old Russian princess in there I can't get rid of. She says she wants to learn the trade, and I daren't leave her with my designs. I can't make out whether she's only a Nihilist or a kleptomaniac."
"I want to put my wife in your hands," said Barnaby. "I'll come for her at two. Can you burn all that crape, and dress her in something sensible?"
Mélisande screamed again, fixing her eyes for the first time on Susan.
"Is it a joke," she said, "or have you been playing fast and loose with other people?"
"I don't know what you mean," said Barnaby, but his eyes hardened. She glanced at his face, subduing her voice a little.
"I have never been paid," she said, "for an outfit of the most expensive mourning. The day after we read of your—departure in the papers, Julia Kelly came in here and asked what was the proper thing to wear when you lost your—love. I told her it varied. If the man hadn't proposed black would look like an affectation. I suggested mauve as harmlessly sentimental. And she said, 'But if he were practically your husband?' and I said, of course, practically widow's mourning, but not a cap. And she wore it...."
He moved restlessly under her detaining hand on his sleeve. "I'm betraying no confidences," she said. "It's a matter of common knowledge.—How long, in the name of goodness, have you been married? Who is she?"
"Two or three years," he said. She was still holding on to his coat.
"Wait," she said. "Wait. Oh, you are as mad as ever. How do you want her dressed? She looks awfully young, poor child."
But Barnaby had made his escape.