The incident passed almost unnoticed. The meal ended pleasantly. With the exception of the two women in their mutual attitude, everybody was surprisedly delighted with everybody else. Etta thought Quixtus the very dearest thing, next to Admiral Concannon, that had ever a bald spot on the top of his head. Clementina, in a fit of graciousness, gave Huckaby the precious freedom of her studio. He could come and look at her pictures whenever he liked. Sheila, made much of, went away duly impressed with her new friends. Quixtus rubbed his hands at the success of his party. The apparently irreconcilable were reconciled, difficulties were vanishing rapidly, his path stretched out before him in rosy smoothness.
But Tommy’s quick eyes had noticed the snatching of Sheila.
“Etta,” said he, “I’ve known Clementina intimately all these years, and I find I know nothing at all about her.”
“What do you mean?” asked the girl.
“For the first time in my life,” said he, “I’ve just discovered that the dear old thing is as jealous as a cat.”
CHAPTER XX
My good children, I tell you we’ll go by train,” said Clementina, putting her foot down. “I don’t care a brass button for the chauffeur’s loneliness, and the prospect of his pining away on his journey back to London leaves me cold.”
She had exhausted the delights of the car of thirty-five million dove-power, and was anxious to settle Sheila in Romney Place as quickly as possible.
“As for you two,” she added, “you have had as big a dose of each other as is good for you.”
Only one thing tempted her to linger in Paris—curiosity as to the sentimental degree of the friendship between the lady of her disfavour and Quixtus. That she was a new friend and not an old friend, the exchange of a few remarks with the ingenuous Lady Louisa had enabled her very soon to discover. Clementina looked askance on such violent intimacies. Quixtus, for whose welfare now she felt herself, in an absurd way, responsible, had not the constitution to stand them. The lady might be highly connected and move in the selectest of circles, but she had a hard edge, betraying what Clementina was pleased to call the society hack; she was shallow, insincere; talked out of a hastily stuffed memory instead of an intellect; she had the vulgarity of good breeding, as noticeable a quality as the good-breeding of one in lowly station; she was insufferable—an impossible companion for a man of Quixtus’s mental equipment and sensitive organisation. There was something else about her that baffled Clementina, and further whetted her curiosity.