Come!

AUBREY.

Well!

DRUMMLE.

It so happens that to-night I was exceptionally early in dressing for dinner.

MISQUITH.

For which dinner--the fish and cutlet?

DRUMMLE.

For _this_ dinner, of course--really, Frank! At a quarter to eight, in fact, I found myself tr.i.m.m.i.n.g my nails, with ten minutes to spare. Just then enter my man with a note--would I hasten, as fast as cab could carry me, to old Lady Orreyed in Bruton Street?--"sad trouble." Now, recollect, please, I had ten minutes on my hands, old Lady Orreyed was a very dear friend of my mother's, and was in some distress.

AUBREY.

Cayley, come to the fish and cutlet?

MISQUITH _and_ JAYNE.

Yes, yes, and the pancake!

DRUMMLE.

Upon my word! Well, the scene in Bruton Street beggars description; the women servants looked scared, the men drunk; and there was poor old Lady Orreyed on the floor of her boudoir like Queen Bess among her pillows.

AUBREY.

What's the matter?

DRUMMLE.

[_To everybody._] You know George Orreyed?

MISQUITH.

Yes.

JAYNE.

I've met him.

DRUMMLE.

Well, he's a thing of the past.

AUBREY.

Not dead!

DRUMMLE.

Certainly, in the worst sense. He's married Mabel Hervey.

MISQUITH.

What!

DRUMMLE.

It's true--this morning. The poor mother showed me his letter--a dozen curt words, and some of those ill-spelt.

MISQUITH.

[_Walking up to the fireplace._] I'm very sorry.

JAYNE.

Pardon my ignorance--who _was_ Mabel Hervey?

DRUMMLE.

You don't----? Oh, of course not. Miss Hervey--Lady Orreyed, as she now is--was a lady who would have been, perhaps has been, described in the reports of the Police or the Divorce Court as an actress. Had she belonged to a lower stratum of our advanced civilisation she would, in the event of judicial inquiry, have defined her calling with equal justification as that of a dressmaker. To do her justice, she is a type of a cla.s.s which is immortal. Physically, by the strange caprice of creation, curiously beautiful; mentally, she lacks even the strength of deliberate viciousness. Paint her portrait, it would symbolise a creature perfectly patrician; lance a vein of her superbly-modelled arm, you would get the poorest _vin ordinaire_! Her affections, emotions, impulses, her very existence--a burlesque! Flaxen, five-and-twenty, and feebly frolicsome; anybody's, in less gentle society I should say everybody's, property! That, doctor, was Miss Hervey who is the new Lady Orreyed. Dost thou like the picture?

MISQUITH.

Very good, Cayley! Bravo!

AUBREY.

[_Laying his hand on_ DRUMMLE'S _shoulder._] You'd scarcely believe it, Jayne, but none of us really know anything about this lady, our gay young friend here, I suspect, least of all.

DRUMMLE.

Aubrey, I applaud your chivalry.

AUBREY.

And perhaps you'll let me finish a couple of letters which Frank and Jayne have given me leave to write. [_Returning to the writing-table._]

Ring for what you want, like a good fellow!

[AUBREY _resumes his writing._

MISQUITH.