"Well, if I had to choose, I think I would have one more like yours, Mr. Nesmith; only very old and dignified, something of the dowager type, who would tell delightful stories of Paris under Louis Philippe and Rome under the Popes, and possibly write some rather indiscreet memoirs. Something definitely connecting my own time with hers, you know."
"Oh, I say, no fair!" interrupted James in unthoughtful high spirits. "No fair stealing somebody else's grandmother! You've described Miss Carson's grandmother, Mrs. Harriman, unless I'm greatly mistaken. Beatrice, isn't Mrs. Harriman's ideal grandmother suspiciously like old Lady Moville?"
Beatrice, who was sitting two places down the table from Mrs. Harriman, had heard the description; the grandmother conversation had, in fact, absorbed the attention of very nearly half the table.
"Very like, I admit; but Mrs. Harriman is quite welcome to her.... She is not exactly my ideal of a grandmother...!" She turned directly toward James and made the last remark straight at him with a sort of deprecating smile of comprehension. It was as though she said: "I say that to you because I know you'll understand!" It did not amount to much; it was one of the fleeting signs of mutual comprehension that friends will frequently exchange in the presence of acquaintances. But unfortunately the remark and the way it was given were extremely ill-timed as far as James was concerned. The effect they caused in him may perhaps be best likened to one of those sudden fits of faintness that overcome people convalescing from a long illness; the sort of thing where you are all right one minute and gasping and calling for brandy the next, and the stronger you feel beforehand the harder the faintness seizes you when it comes. If James had been on the watch for such occurrences, the incident would not have had half the effect on him that it did. As it was, however, Beatrice's little speech and glance stirred into momentary activity much of the feeling that he had been striving all these months to keep down.
It was not really much; it did not actually undo the work of those ten months. James was really convalescent. But the suddenness of the thing overcame him for the moment and gave him a feeling approaching that of actual physical faintness. He saw a glass of champagne standing at his side and involuntarily reached toward it.
No one noticed him much. Mrs. Farnsworth was chattering easily with Mr. Nesmith; conversation had resumed its normal course. Possibly the knowledge that James had touched on a rather doubtful topic, Beatrice's father's family, gave conversation a slight added impetus; certainly if anybody noticed James' embarrassment they assumed that his slight indiscretion amply accounted for it. At any rate, when his embarrassment led him so far as not only to reach for his left-hand neighbor's glass of champagne instead of his own but to tip it over in the process, the said left-hand neighbor, who happened to be Madge Elliston, attributed his action to that reason and acted accordingly.
With a tact that would have seemed overdone if it had not been so prompt and sufficient, she immediately assumed that it had been she who had knocked the glass over.
"Oh, I am so sorry!" she exclaimed. "I am such an awkward idiot; I hope it didn't go all over you, James?... No, my dress is all right; apparently nothing but the tablecloth has suffered," and so forth, and so forth, to an accompaniment of gentle swabbings and shifting of table utensils.
"Oh, Madge?" said James vaguely. "That's all right—I mean, it's my fault, entirely...." He joined in the rescue work with grateful fervor, and in a moment a servant came up and did something efficient with a napkin. Madge chattered on.
"I never do get through a party without doing something silly! I'm glad it's nothing worse than this; I generally count that dinner as lost when I don't drop a hairpin into my food. I used to be quite embarrassed about it, but I've got so now that I eat shamelessly on, right down to the hairpin. I wonder if your aunt saw? No—or rather, she did, and is far too polite to show it. She just won't ask me again, that's all!"