Presently all Miss Ley’s guests, except Frank Hurrell, bade her good-night, and he showed no intention of following their example.
“You don’t want to go to bed yet, do you?” she asked the Dean. “Let us go into the library.”
Here Frank took from a drawer his pipe, and helping himself from a tobacco-jar placed in readiness, sat down. Miss Ley, noticing Bella’s slight look of surprise, explained.
“Frank keeps a pipe here and makes me buy his favourite tobacco. It’s one of the advantages of old age that you can sit into the small hours of the morning and talk with young men.”
But when he too was gone, Miss Ley, an old-fashioned hostess solicitous for her guests’ comfort, accompanied Bella to her room.
“I hope you enjoyed my little party,” she said.
“Very much,” replied Bella. “But why do you ask Mrs. Castillyon? She’s dreadfully common, isn’t she?”
“My dear,” answered Miss Ley ironically, “her husband is a most important person—in Dorsetshire, and her own family has a whole page in the Gentleman’s Bible or the Landed Gentry.”
“I shouldn’t have thought she was county,” said Bella seriously; “she seemed to me very vulgar.”
“She is very vulgar,” answered Miss Ley, “but it’s the sort of vulgarity which is a mark of the highest breeding. To talk too loud and to laugh like a bus-driver, to use the commonest slang and to dress outrageously, are all signs of the grande dame. Often in Bond Street I see women with painted cheeks and dyed hair dressed in a manner which even a courtesan would think startling, and I recognise the leaders of London fashion. . . . Good-night. Don’t expect to see me at breakfast; that is a meal which only the angels of heaven should eat in company.”