This entirely agreed with Reggie’s ideas, and since he was not to pay the bill, he took care to order the champagne he liked best, which was by no means the least expensive. Flattering himself on his educated palate, he drank the wine with added satisfaction because the price was high. Mrs. Castillyon, overpowdered, with somewhat the look of a faded rose arranged under careful lights in a shop window to delude the purchaser that it had still its first freshness, was in high spirits: pleased with her own appearance and with that of the handsome youth in front of her, languid and sensual as the waking Adam of Michaelangelo, she talked very quickly in an excessively loud voice. Reggie’s spirits rose with the intoxicating liquor, and his doubts whether an amour with a woman of distinction was quite worth while, were soon dissipated; looking at the costly splendour of her gown, the boy’s flesh tingled, and his eyes rested with approval on the diamonds about her neck and in her yellow hair. It was a new sensation to dine with a well-dressed, rich woman in a crowded restaurant, and he felt himself with pride a very gay Lothario.
Handing something, he touched her fingers.
“Don’t,” she said, “you give me the shivers;” and seeing the effect she created, Mrs. Castillyon displayed all her arts and graces.
“Confound this theatre! I wish we weren’t bound to go to it.”
“But we are. Lady Paperleigh is going with her man, and we’ve got to chaperon her.”
It pleased Reggie to sit in a box with a person of title, and he knew it would gratify his mother.
“Why don’t they make your hubby a Baronet?” he asked ingenuously.
“My mother-in-law won’t fork out. You see, Paul ain’t what you might call a genius—he’d love a handle to name, but the price has gone up lately, and a baronetcy is one of the few things you have to pay for money down.
Reggie’s appetite was large, and he went through the long dinner with huge satisfaction. When they arrived at dessert, he lit a cigarette and gave a sigh of contented repletion.
“Yet people say the pleasures of the intellect are higher than the pleasures of the table,” he sighed.