“My darling, of course not!”
“I want you to write to my solicitors. I’ve never made a will; and, of course, I shall have to make another, if and when we marry, but I don’t want to run even the remotest risk. I gather that you can’t look to your father with any certainty?”
“He told me so—quite definitely. If I chose to cut myself adrift—”
“Well, I’m going to tell my solicitors to draft a will; I’ll leave your name blank and fill it in afterwards. Then, if I drop down dead in the street—”
“Don’t, Eric!”
It was seven o’clock before he had finished, and they both had to dress and make their way out to dinner by a quarter past eight. Eric walked into Ryder Street to find her a taxi and to post his letters.
“What do you say to coming to my people for this next week-end?,” he asked. “We won’t tell them anything, of course, but I should like you to meet them. I’m committed to going any way; and I can take you on the plea of work, if necessary. My younger brother was away fighting, when he came of age, so we’re celebrating it now. Will you come? Good. We’ll discuss details at dinner; you’re coming to this Brazilian show at the Ritz, aren’t you?”
“Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos? Yes, Aunt Connie’s taking me.”
“Let’s hope we’re together. It threatens to be a tiresome evening.”
His dinner-party, heralded by a flamboyant card of invitation and reinforced by the personal appeals of Lady Maitland, Mrs. Shelley and Lady Poynter, had threatened him for three weeks. Early in the season a taciturn and swarthy South American had descended upon London with a wife, a bottomless purse and inexhaustible letters of introduction. Madame Pinto had noteworthy diamonds, vitality, an interest in the more obvious forms of flirtation and a hunger for entertaining. Her first letter of introduction was presented to Lady Poynter, who telephoned to six friends in twice six minutes: “If you will help me out with this Pinto woman, I’ll do the same for you”; and for three weeks the Brazilians were pushed from house to house by those who were menaced by their own Madame Pinto—under other names—or who had launched Madame Pintos in the past. Gerry Deganway, whose name headed every list of those whom it did not matter inviting to meet the Pinto de Vasconcellos, tracked them round London and sketched a map of their progress from Belgrave Square and Lady Poynter, where they were submerged by symbolist poets and rapidly expelled because they “contributed nothing” to the symposium, by way of Eaton Place, where Lady Maitland sold them boxes for charity concerts, to Grosvenor Square and Croxton Hall, where Lady Pentyre took them in because, in her son’s words, she knew no better and would be kind to any one.