“No,” said Mrs. Alden, more placidly than ever, “before I was divorced.”
There was a dead silence, and Montague sat gasping to catch his breath. Then suddenly he heard a faint subdued chuckle, which grew into open laughter; and he stole a glance at Mrs. Alden, and saw that her eyes were twinkling; and then he began to laugh himself. They laughed together, so merrily that others at the table began to look at them in perplexity.
So the ice was broken between them; which filled Montague with a vast relief. But he was still dimly touched with awe—for he realized that this must be the great Mrs. Billy Alden, whose engagement to the Duke of London was now the topic of the whole country. And that huge diamond ornament must be part of Mrs. Alden’s million-dollar outfit of jewellery!
The great lady volunteered not to tell on him; and added generously that when he came to dinner with her she would post him concerning the company. “It’s awkward for a stranger, I can understand,” said she; and continued, grimly: “When people get divorces it sometimes means that they have quarrelled—and they don’t always make it up afterward, either. And sometimes other people quarrel—almost as bitterly as if they had been married. Many a hostess has had her reputation ruined by not keeping track of such things.”
So Montague made the discovery that the great Mrs. Billy, though. forbidding of aspect, was good-natured when she chose to be, and with a pretty wit. She was a woman with a mind of her own—a hard-fighting character, who had marshalled those about her, and taken her place at the head of the column. She had always counted herself a personage enough to do exactly as she pleased; through the course of the dinner she would take up the decanter of Scotch, and make a pass to help Montague—and then, when he declined, pour out imperturbably what she wanted. “I don’t like your brother,” she said to him, a little later. “He won’t last; but he tells me you’re different, so maybe I will like you. Come and see me sometime, and let me tell you what not to do in New York.”
Then Montague turned to talk with his hostess, who sat on his right.
“Do you play bridge?” asked Mrs. Winnie, in her softest and most gracious tone.
“My brother has given me a book to study from,” he answered. “But if he takes me about day and night, I don’t know how I’m to manage it.”
“Come and let me teach you,” said Mrs. Winnie. “I mean it, really,” she added. “I’ve nothing to do—at least that I’m not tired of. Only I don’t believe you’d take long to learn all that I know.”
“Aren’t you a successful player?” he asked sympathetically.