“And she's the sort of woman,” replied, “a man couldn't get to go to Venice.”
Lord Ayllington's sigh was a proof of an intimate knowledge of the world.
“I suppose not,” he said. “It's always so. And there are few American women who would throw everything overboard for a grand passion.”
“You ought to see her on the beach,” Mr. Grainger suggested.
“I intend to,” said Ayllington. “By the way, not a few of your American women get divorced, and keep their cake and eat it, too. It's a bit difficult, here at Newport, for a stranger, you know.”
“I'm willing to bet,” declared Mr. Grainger, “that it doesn't pay. When you're divorced and married again you've got to keep up appearances—the first time you don't. Some of these people are working pretty hard.”
Whereupon, for the Englishman's enlightenment, he recounted a little gossip.
This, of course, was in the smoking room. In the drawing-room, Mrs. Grainger's cousin did not escape, and the biography was the subject of laughter.
“You see something of him, I hear,” remarked Mrs. Playfair, a lady the deficiency of whose neck was supplied by jewels, and whose conversation sounded like liquid coming out of an inverted bottle. “Is he really serious about the biography?”
“You'll have to ask Mr. Grainger,” replied Honora.