“I saw you in London, last winter.”
“I was there. Funny I don’t remember—”
“You were in uniform with Margot Walling and Lady Ilden. At a play. Margot was wearing one of her yellow frocks. I was the other side of the gangway. I wondered about you, rather. Margot always snubs me. I’m a countess of sorts and it always interests me when Americans snub me.—Let’s get something to drink. I don’t dance well and you must be in torments—What’s your name?”
She was a lank, tired creature in a rowdy gown sewn with false pearls that hissed theatrically as she slumped into a chair on the lit terrace.
“Cousin, eh?—Well, Margot amuses me. She’s the genuine aristocrat, you know? Take what you want and to hell with the rest. Pity so few Americans catch the idea. Imagine any continental woman coming a thousand miles to give a dance for a cheapjack penny poet like this sweep. Afraid he won’t mention her in his travel book, I dare say. Run and get me a drink. Something mild.” A youth at the buffet told him this was the Countess of Flint. She sipped wine cup, refused a cigarette and asked, “Where did you go to school? Saint Andrew’s? My brothers did Groton. Beautiful training wasted on the desert air. That’s the trouble with the American game. Did you ever think how much good it would have done the beastly country to have had about four generations of a hard and fast aristocracy—plenty of money, no morals, quantities of manner? It’s simply a waste of time and money to train lads and then turn them loose in a herd of rich women all afraid of their dressmakers. What a zero the average American woman is!”
“Hush,” he said, “That’s treason! You’ll be shot at sunrise!”
“Unsalted porridge. Utter vacuum. Not a vacuum either because she’s a bully, usually. And a prude.—Is Margot going to marry Ronny Dufford?”
Gurdy jumped, inescapably startled. He said, “Colonel Dufford? The General Staff man who writes plays? I’m sure I don’t know.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad thing. Ronny’s all right—the gentleman Bohemian touch and I dare say she has money.” The lank woman coughed, went on, “She’ll take on an Englishman in any case, though.”
“She’s in New York.”