The dressing-room was furnished like a lady’s boudoir, the furniture upholstered with exquisite embroidered silk, and the bed hung with curtains of the same material. There was a huge bunch of roses on the centre-table, and the odour of roses hung heavy in the room.
The valet stood at attention with a rack of neckties, from which Reggie critically selected one to match his shirt. “Are you going to take Alice with you down to the Havens’s?” he was asking; and he added, “You’ll meet Vivie Patton down there—she’s had another row at home.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Oliver.
“Yes,” said the other. “Frank waited up all night for her, and he wept and tore his hair and vowed he would kill the Count. Vivie told him to go to hell.”
“Good God!” said Oliver. “Who told you that?”
“The faithful Alphonse,” said Reggie, nodding toward his valet. “Her maid told him. And Frank vows he’ll sue—I half expected to see it in the papers this morning.”
“I met Vivie on the street yesterday,” said Oliver. “She looked as chipper as ever.”
Reggie shrugged his shoulders. “Have you seen this week’s paper?” he asked. “They’ve got another of Ysabel’s suppressed poems in.”—And then he turned toward Montague to explain that “Ysabel” was the pseudonym of a young débutante who had fallen under the spell of Baudelaire and Wilde, and had published a volume of poems of such furious eroticism that her parents were buying up stray copies at fabulous prices.
Then the conversation turned to the Horse Show, and for quite a while they talked about who was going to wear what. Finally Oliver rose, saying that they would have to get a bite to eat before leaving for the Havens’s. “You’ll have a good time,” said Reggie. “I’d have gone myself, only I promised to stay and help Mrs. de Graffenried design a dinner. So long!”
Montague had heard nothing about the visit to the Havens’s; but now, as they strolled down the Avenue, Oliver explained that they were to spend the weekend at Castle Havens. There was quite a party going up this Friday afternoon, and they would find one of the Havens’s private cars waiting. They had nothing to do meantime, for their valets would attend to their packing, and Alice and her maid would meet them at the depot.