“Two parties at the same time—and in the afternoon! How very odd!”
“They will look very odd, very—in Berkeley Square,” responded the Prophet, in a tone of considerable dejection. “I don’t know, I’m sure, what Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus will think. Still I’ve given strict orders that they are to be let in. What else could I do?”
He gazed at Lady Enid in a demanding manner.
“What else could I possibly do under the circumstances?” he repeated.
“Sit down, dear Mr. Vivian,” she answered, with her peculiar Scotch lassie seductiveness, “and tell me, your sincere friend, what the circumstances are.”
Unluckily her curiosity had led her to overdo persuasion. That cooing interpolation of “your sincere friend”—too strongly honeyed—suddenly recalled the Prophet to the fact that Lady Enid was not, and could never be, his confidante in the matter that obsessed him. He therefore sat down, but with an abrupt air of indefinite social liveliness, and exclaimed, not unlike Mr. Robert Green,—
“Well, and how are things going with you, dear Lady Enid?”
She jumped under the transition as under a whip.
“Me! But—these parties you were telling me about?”
But the Prophet remembered his oath. He was a strictly honourable little man, and never swore carelessly.