* * *
One evening Dick asked the others to sup with him; and since Alec had a public dinner to attend, and Lucy was going to the play with Lady Kelsey, he took Julia Crowley to the opera. To make an even number he invited Robert Boulger to join them at the _Savoy_. After brushing his hair with the scrupulous thought his thinning locks compelled, Dick waited in the vestibule for Mrs. Crowley. Presently she came, looking very pretty in a gown of flowered brocade which made her vaguely resemble a shepherdess in an old French picture. With her diamond necklace and a tiara in her dark hair, she looked like a dainty princess playing fantastically at the simple life.
'I think people are too stupid,' she broke out, as she joined Dick. 'I've just met a woman who said to me: "Oh, I hear you're going to America. Do go and call on my sister. She'll be so glad to see you." "I shall be delighted," I said, "but where does your sister live?" "Jonesville, Ohio," "Good heavens," I said, "I live in New York, and what should I be doing in Jonesville, Ohio?"'
'Keep perfectly calm,' said Dick.
'I shall not keep calm,' she answered. 'I hate to be obviously thought next door to a red Indian by a woman who's slab-sided and round-shouldered. And I'm sure she has dirty petticoats.'
'Why?'
'English women do.'
'What a monstrous libel!' cried Dick.
At that moment they saw Lady Kelsey come in with Lucy, and a moment later Alec and Robert Boulger joined them. They went in to supper and sat down.
'I hate Amelia,' said Mrs. Crowley emphatically, as she laid her long white gloves by the side of her.
'I deplore the prejudice with which you regard a very jolly sort of a girl,' answered Dick.
'Amelia has everything that I thoroughly object to in a woman. She has no figure, and her legs are much too long, and she doesn't wear corsets. In the daytime she has a weakness for picture hats, and she can't say boo to a goose.'
'Who is Amelia?' asked Boulger.
'Amelia is Mr. Lomas' affianced wife,' answered the lady, with a provoking glance at him.
'I didn't know you were going to be married, Dick,' said Lady Kelsey, inclined to be a little hurt because nothing had been said to her of this.
'I'm not,' he answered. 'And I've never set eyes on Amelia yet. She is an imaginary character that Mrs. Crowley has invented as the sort of woman whom I would marry.'
'I know Amelia,' Mrs. Crowley went on. 'She wears quantities of false hair, and she'll adore you. She's so meek and so quiet, and she thinks you such a marvel. But don't ask me to be nice to Amelia.'
'My dear lady, Amelia wouldn't approve of you. She'd think you much too outspoken, and she wouldn't like your American accent. You must never forget that Amelia is the granddaughter of a baronet.'
'I shall hold her up to Fleming as an awful warning of the woman whom I won't let him marry at any price. "If you marry a woman like that, Fleming," I shall say to him, "I shan't leave you a penny. It shall all go the University of Pennsylvania."'
'If ever it is my good fortune to meet Fleming, I shall have great pleasure in kicking him hard,' said Dick. 'I think he's a most objectionable little beast.'
'How can you be so absurd? Why, my dear Mr. Lomas, Fleming could take you up in one hand and throw you over a ten-foot wall.'
'Fleming must be a sportsman,' said Bobbie, who did not in the least know whom they were talking about.
'He is,' answered Mrs. Crowley. 'He's been used to the saddle since he was three years old, and I've never seen the fence that would make him lift a hair. And he's the best swimmer at Harvard, and he's a wonderful shot--I wish you could see him shoot, Mr. MacKenzie--and he's a dear.'
'Fleming's a prig,' said Dick.
'I'm afraid you're too old for Fleming,' said Mrs. Crowley, looking at Lucy. 'If it weren't for that, I'd make him marry you.'
'Is Fleming your brother, Mrs. Crowley?' asked Lady Kelsey.
'No, Fleming's my son.'
'But you haven't got a son,' retorted the elder lady, much mystified.
'No, I know I haven't; but Fleming would have been my son if I'd had one.'
'You mustn't mind them, Aunt Alice,' smiled Lucy gaily. 'They argue by the hour about Amelia and Fleming, and neither of them exists; but sometimes they go into such details and grow so excited that I really begin to believe in them myself.'
But Mrs. Crowley, though she appeared a light-hearted and thoughtless little person, had much common sense; and when their party was ended and she was giving Dick a lift in her carriage, she showed that, notwithstanding her incessant chatter, her eyes throughout the evening had been well occupied.
'Did you owe Bobbie a grudge that you asked him to supper?' she asked suddenly.
'Good heavens, no. Why?'
'I hope Fleming won't be such a donkey as you are when he's your age.'
'I'm sure Amelia will be much more polite than you to the amiable, middle-aged gentleman who has the good fortune to be her husband.'
'You might have noticed that the poor boy was eating his heart out with jealousy and mortification, and Lucy was too much absorbed in Alec to pay the very smallest attention to him.'
'What are you talking about?'
Mrs. Crowley gave him a glance of amused disdain.
'Haven't you noticed that Lucy is desperately in love with Mr. MacKenzie, and it doesn't move her in the least that poor Bobbie has fetched and carried for her for ten years, done everything she deigned to ask, and been generally nice and devoted and charming?'
'You amaze me,' said Dick. 'It never struck me that Lucy was the kind of girl to fall in love with anyone. Poor thing. I'm so sorry.'
'Why?'
'Because Alec wouldn't dream of marrying. He's not that sort of man.'
'Nonsense. Every man is a marrying man if a woman really makes up her mind to it.'
'Don't say that. You terrify me.'
'You need not be in the least alarmed,' answered Mrs. Crowley, coolly, 'because I shall refuse you.'
'It's very kind of you to reassure me,' he answered, smiling. 'But all the same I don't think I'll risk a proposal.'
'My dear friend, your only safety is in immediate flight.'
'Why?'
'It must be obvious to the meanest intelligence that you've been on the verge of proposing to me for the last four years.'
'Nothing will induce me to be false to Amelia.'
'I don't believe that Amelia really loves you.'
'I never said she did; but I'm sure she's quite willing to marry me.'
'I think that's detestably vain.'
'Not at all. However old, ugly, and generally undesirable a man is, he'll find a heap of charming girls who are willing to marry him. Marriage is still the only decent means of livelihood for a really nice woman.'
'Don't let's talk about Amelia; let's talk about me,' said Mrs. Crowley.
'I don't think you're half so interesting.'
'Then you'd