"Lady Verity-Stewart," said I, with a touch of malice--our hostess was the last woman with whom he had spoken--"is a perfect dear."
"So she is, but I meant Lady Auriol."
"I've known her since she was that high," I said spreading out a measuring hand. "Her development has been most interesting."
A shade of annoyance passed over the Colonel's ugly good-humoured face. To treat the radiant creature who had swum into his ken as a subject for psychological observation savoured of profanity. With a smile I added:
"She's one of the very best."
His brow cleared and his teeth gleamed out my tribute.
"I've met very few English ladies in the course of my life," said he half apologetically. "The other day, a brother officer finding me fooling about Pall Mall insisted on my lunching with him at the Carlton. He had a party. I sat next to a Mrs. Tankerville, who I gather is a celebrity."
"She is," said I. "And she said, 'You must really come and have tea with me to-morrow. I've a crowd of most interesting people coming.'"
"She did," cried Lackaday, regarding me with awestricken eyes, as Saul must have looked at the Witch of Endor. "But I didn't go. I couldn't talk to her. I was as dumb as a fish. Oh, damned dumb! And the dumber I was the more she talked at me. I had risen from the ranks, hadn't I? She thought careers like mine such a romance. I just sat and sweated and couldn't eat. She made me feel as if she was going to exhibit me as the fighting skeleton in her freak museum. If ever I see that woman coming towards me in the street, I'll turn tail and run like hell."
I laughed. "You mustn't compare Mrs. Tankerville with Lady Auriol Dayne."