“Delighted.”
“Sir Gerald Gerson and the Italian ambassador will be with us. I want to show you some choice Dresden that my husband has just bought at Christie’s.”
Mrs. Betty received the favor with the smiling and enthusiastic simplicity of an ingenuous girl.
“How kind of you! I am so fond of china.”
Parker Steel gave his arm to the great lady, and escorted her to her carriage, his deportment a professional triumph in the consummation of such a courtesy.
He found Mrs. Betty alone in the drawing-room when he returned. She was lying back in the chair that Lady Gillingham’s stout majesty had impressed, and had Mignon and a kitten on her lap.
Parker Steel, standing on the hearth-rug, looked round him with the air of a man to whom the flowers in the vases, the lilies and azaleas in bloom, seemed to exhale an incense of success. Social prosperity and an abundance of cash; the expensive arm-chairs appeared to assert the facts loudly.
“A satisfactory party, dear, eh?”
Mrs. Betty, fondling Mignon’s ears, looked up and smiled.
“I think we have conquered Boadicea at last,” she said.