"David's all over the Ambassadors," she remarked, with her eyes on a corner where he was standing with three or four be-ribboned Secretaries.
"That's old Dracopoli," I told her. "He was in command when Raney's father was wounded. The fat little man with the high cheek-bones used to be Russian Minister of Finance."
"I had no idea he was so famous," she drawled, with easy contempt.
"I'm inclined to think Raney's a bigger man than either of us gave him credit for," I said.
And that was my discovery. It cleared my mind of a patronizing friendliness dating from the time when I was a monitor and he a fag at Melton. I always recognized his mental abilities no less than the endurance which had kept him for a dozen years from starving. But he talked so much like any other brilliant Irish boy, he was so exuberant and unstable, that it was the convention not to take him seriously. That night—and under my eyes—he seemed to be coming into his kingdom. It was almost his first public appearance in England since boyhood, and, as old scandals slipped into oblivion, the friends of his father claimed acquaintance as my uncle had done six years before. There are few men who have before their twenty-sixth birthday made all the money they will ever need, few who have travelled in so many countries of the world and met so many people. That was all that the Claridge ball-room knew, but I had lived in close communion with him for several years and could have written many a supplementary chapter.
"He's clever," Sonia admitted, "but he's frightfully selfish."
"Have you met his partner—a man called Morris?" I asked. "He's the man to discuss Raney's shortcomings with you."
"I don't want to discuss them with anyone. I know. He's absolutely wrapped up in himself and his precious dreams. George, for some years he and I ..."
"I know," I interrupted. "Once when you dined with me at the House, you promised some day to tell me why you didn't end your ridiculous boy-and-girl engagement."
Sonia put her head on one side and pouted.