"I'm not cross, only frank."

"Oh, but frankness is such a bore, except when you use it as a weapon of concealment. In fact, I was talking to Jack about that very point two days ago. As a means of convincing people that you are not telling the truth, there is nothing so certain as to tell it."

This Bismarckian but imaginative _resume_ of the conversation in the Park came out quite glibly, and Marie laughed.

"Really, Mildred, you have a way with you," she said. "Jack went out yesterday morning in a vile temper, and came back after riding with you like a drifting angel, all sweetness and smiles. What had you done to him?"

"I forget what we talked about--probably about him, for that always puts a man in a good temper quicker than anything else. I'm so glad it was successful."

Marie sat down on a gilt Louis XV chair upholstered in Genoese velvet.

"I shall send him to you whenever he is in a bad temper, I think," she went on, "with a ticket pinned on to him, 'Please return in good condition.'"

Mildred laughed.

"Dearly as I like Jack," she said, "I am not sure that my affection would quite go to those lengths. Because Jack in an odious temper is like--well, like Jack in an odious temper. I know nothing, indeed, to compare to him."

"Well, I wish you would tell me your secret."

"My dear, there is none. Besides, another woman can so often put a man in a good temper, when his wife could not possibly."

"That doesn't say much for matrimony."

Mildred looked up a moment, and then fell to fingering her fan again.

"Oh, matrimony is such an excellent inst.i.tution that a few little disadvantages of that sort really don't weigh. But certainly what I say is true. And you know it is just the same with us. Jack can put me in a good temper when my dear Andrew would a.s.suredly fare pretty badly if he tried."

"I never quite knew why you married him."

"Oh, for a variety of reasons. He was very rich, I liked him, he wanted to marry me. And we have been very happy. One can't look for perfection in one's husband any more than in one's own servants or one's horses.

The point is that they should not have any vices, and on the whole suit you."

"Is that the modern theory?" asked Marie.

"No, I don't know that it is exclusively modern. But what's the matter, Marie? What was Jack in a bad temper about?"

Marie frowned.

"Jack was coa.r.s.e. I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. Do you remember my going home with Jim two nights ago from your house, when I was going to see Blanche about the bazaar? Well, he hinted that I had not been to see her at all. Now, what are you to do when your husband behaves like that?"

Mildred laughed.

"Dear me! is that all? Men are coa.r.s.e folk, you will not recognise that, and when they are in a bad temper they say all sorts of things they don't mean. Now, I can tell you how I should deal with that. I should simply have laughed in his face, laughed with a wide mouth. But as for letting it disturb my peace of mind-- You, too, of all people, who simply are the most enviable woman in London."

"So you tell me," said Marie; "but I don't quite know why."

"Oh, my dear, if it was not you I should think you were fishing for compliments-- Why? Because you have the brains to be sometimes amused and sometimes bored at what absorbs all of us; because you are young; because somehow or other you are _the_ person; because you make any woman standing near you look dowdy and coa.r.s.e----"

Marie laughed.

"I am stifled in my own perfections," she said. "Let me get a breath of air."

"Guardina is just going to oblige us with one," said Mildred. "She really is like the girl in the fairy stories out of whose mouth drop diamonds and pearls. I suppose she is paid at least a sovereign a note.

How pleasant that must be! Look, there is poor Nellie Leighton standing close to her, as if she hoped to be able to pick some of them up. What a wonderful woman! Not a penny of any sort to bless herself with, an insatiable appet.i.te for pleasure, and the most light-hearted and appreciative woman I know. She sees us; she is coming over here."

Mrs. Leighton, in fact, opened her mouth sideways towards one ear, which was her way of smiling, and rustled elaborately across the room. She laid an affectionate hand on Marie's arm, and looked as if she had something very important to say.

"She is going to sing the 'Zitanella,'" she whispered as the accompanist played a brilliant chromatic pa.s.sage to compel silence. "Quite too divine for words. And I have bought a new house. Rustic."

But at the moment a sound as faint and far-away as the ring of a musical gla.s.s pierced the air. Guardina's lips were hardly parted, but that spear of sound thrilled through the room. Certainly, if she was paid a sovereign a note, that first note of the "Zitanella" was good measure.

Then it broke like quicksilver into a thousand perfectly round and shining globules of sound, collected itself again, poised, quavered, trilled, thrilled, perched as it were like a bird on the topmost twig of sound, and vanished like a conjurer's handkerchief into air. Mrs.

Leighton again extended her mouth over her right cheek.

"Too delicious!" she said. "And how we are to pay for it all--the house I mean--I haven't got the remotest idea. It is so comfortable having no money at all: you not only don't, but you can't pay for anything, and it's no use thinking about it. Marie, you must come down and see it.

There are two spare bedrooms all white and chintz. When I am there I always dream of milk and b.u.t.ter and litters of pigs. Yes, isn't Guardina marvellous? I wish she would lend me her vocal cords for a week. I would willingly lend her anything I have for a fortnight."

The end of Guardina's song was marked by a sort of general post, and Marie was snapped up by Mr. Maxwell, if such a phrase can properly be used of so deliberate a process. His interpretation of the art of conversation chiefly consisted in opening his mouth as if he was going to speak, and then shutting it again, like a fish in an aquarium. The person with whom he was conversing he stood over in an encompa.s.sing manner, with an air of proprietorship. Elsewhere Anthony had cornered Mildred Brereton's little girl, who evidently wanted to go away, but was checked by her mother's eye, which from time to time pinned her like a fluttering b.u.t.terfly to the spot. She herself was taken possession of by Mrs. Maxwell, who, unlike her husband, was as voluminous in speech as she was in person. Arthur Naseby, close beside them, was half listening to his hostess's conversation, while he was discussing a quant.i.ty of subjects entirely unfit for discussion with Mrs. Leighton.

"Yes, I'm sure she sings beautiful," said Mrs. Maxwell, "and so true.

She seems to hit the note every time. What a thing to have a gift like that! and I'm sure she makes the most of it. Why, I remember her first coming out, and she went away in a hanson-cab from the opera. But she can go handsomer than cabs now!"

Mrs. Brereton again pinned the unfortunate Maud to her seat.

"And what a brilliant party you have got together, Mrs. Maxwell!" she said. "Positively, there is every one here one has ever heard of, and absolutely n.o.body that one hasn't heard of. That is so clever of you! It is easy enough to get people, but the difficulty is to not have the wrong ones. I'm sure you must find it so."

Mrs. Maxwell sighed.

"It's as much as Anthony and me can do in a week's work to go through the calling-book," she said. "Talk of weeding, you never saw such a deal of it as we have to do. People seem to think they can all come for the calling. But one must be careful, and I try never to ask any one whom a single one of my guests would be sorry to have in their own houses."

Mrs. Brereton smiled a congratulatory smile.

"We should most of us be very glad to see them in ours," she said.

Mrs. Maxwell's mood grew more sublime.

"And the pushing and the shoving that some people do to get asked to other people's houses," she said, "why, it fair pa.s.ses belief. Now, Maxwell has no spirit. 'Let 'em all come,' he says, like that horrid vulgar song; but I said, 'No, Maxwell--if they all come, half of them will keep away, and them's the very half you want, and where shall we be then?' There's Guardina going to sing again, with Pagani this time.

She's got to sing two solos and two duos. How wonderfully their voices suit! you would say they was made for each other. Excuse me, there's the d.u.c.h.ess of Perth just come, and I must say a word to her."

Arthur Naseby sank into the unoccupied seat.

"Anything more divine I never wish to hear," he said in a shrill whisper. "And the diamonds have caught an added l.u.s.tre for their brilliant surroundings. To-night Mrs. Maxwell is one coruscation, with a collation to follow."

"How true, too, what she said about Pagani and Guardina," murmured Mrs.

Brereton. "It takes that sort of person to say that sort of thing. I am not nervous personally, but"--and her eye caught sight of Maud and Anthony again--"but she is an excellent good kind woman," she added with a very distinct change of tone.

"And what of the new man, Jim Spencer?" asked Naseby. "Are there developments? I always look on you as a sort of barometer. You can tell what is going to happen before it does happen."

Mildred looked round.