THE TWEED SUIT.
How long the silence lasted Mrs. Verulam was never able to determine. Nor in after-days could she remember by which member of the party it was broken. As a matter of fact, however, it was the young gentleman in the tweed suit who spoke first. He took his hands out of his pockets with a sort of deliberate carefulness, walked jauntily into the room, and sharply whispered, in passing near the sofa against which poor little Mrs. Verulam was hopelessly reared up:
"Introduce me as my husband!"
Mrs. Verulam's lips were dry. Her head swam, and she saw various shapes, extremely bright in colour, dancing a sort of appalling polka before her eyes. Gazing steadily at these dancing shapes, she said in a piercing voice:
"Duchess—Mr. Van Adam!"
Then she sat down upon the springy sofa in such wise that she moved several times up and down like a cork buoyed upon the waves of the sea. And all the time she thus emulated a cork she kept her eyes fixed upon the young man in the tweed suit, who appeared to rise and fall, or rather to elongate and to diminish in telescope fashion, while he bowed before the Duchess, and received in return a dignified and smiling salutation. But the sofa subsided into a calm, and Mrs. Verulam was obliged to collect herself. Mr. Rodney was addressing her in an excited murmur:
"I had no idea, no notion at all, that you knew Mr. Van Adam."
"Oh yes."
"Besides, I fully understood he was in Florida."