“I 'm delighted to hear it,” said his cousin.
A short while afterwards the dinner-party broke up.
“I don't know whether you care to mix with utter worldlings like us, Mr. Padgate,” said Norma, as she bade him good-bye, “but we are always in on Tuesdays.”
“I'll tie him hand and foot and bring him,” said King. “Good-night, old chap. I'm giving Miss Hardacre a lift home in the brougham.”
Before Jimmie could say yes or no, they were gone. He found himself the last.
“You are certainly not going for another hour, Jimmie,” said Mrs. Deering, as he came forward to take leave. “You will sit in that chair and smoke and tell me all about yourself and make me feel good and pretty.”
“Very well,” he assented, laughing. “Turn me out when it's time for me to go.”
It had been the customary formula between them for many years; for Jimmie Padgate lacked the sense of time and kept eccentric hours, and although Connie Deering delighted in her rare confidential chats with him, a woman with a heavy morrow of engagements must go to bed at a reasonable period of the night. She was a woman in the middle thirties, a childless widow after a brief and almost forgotten married life, rich, pleasure-loving, in the inner circle of London society, and possessing the gayest, kindest, most charitable heart in the world. Her friendship with Norma Hardacre had been a thing of recent date.
She had cultivated it first on account of her cousin Morland King; she had ended in enthusiastic admiration.
“It is awfully good of you,” she said, when they were comfortably settled down to talk, “to waste your time with my unintelligent conversation.”