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He was supposed to be introducing amateurs to Lord Dauntrey, as fresh "victims" for the system. As for Mary, she was out of the exotic atmosphere of gossip and scandal and system-mongering.
Dodo, however, had been a ray of brightness in the house: meretricious, garish brightness perhaps; still she had given a tinselline sparkle to the dull rooms when things were at their worst, and Lady Dauntrey clouded with sullen gloom. When the newest and humblest guests of the Villa Bella Vista lost money beyond a certain limit, the bare thought of the Casino gave them mental indigestion.
She wished to believe the story Lady Dauntrey had told, which might easily be true. Yet there would always remain the little crawling snake of doubt; and that was not fair to Lord Dauntrey. "It's too, too bad, and we are both terribly upset," Eve went on heavily. "But it's the fortune of war, isn't it?
But among the few faithful ones were Lord Dauntrey and his royal friend, who was stared at a good deal, and evidently recognized. By this time Lord Dauntrey had noticed Mary, his attention being attracted to her by Dom Ferdinand, but as he had not been introduced to the girl in the train, he did not bow.
After he had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes, and told everybody she knew, about the engagement including newspaper men in Johannesburg Dauntrey discovered that the figure she had mentioned was in hundreds, not thousands.
She was so enchanted with a little shivering marmoset, which Miss Wardropp had bought of a wandering monkey-merchant in the Galerie Charles Trois, that Dodo forgave her the wonderful dress and filet, if she did not quite forgive Lady Dauntrey the surprise. Then Mrs. Ernstein produced two trained sparrows, which she called her "mosquito hawks" and took with her everywhere.
"Oh, Lady Dauntrey, what does he mean?" Eve caught the girl by the hand, holding it tightly, as if she feared that she might take alarm and run away. "I've told him that I shall hate him if he's a coward," she answered in a voice cold and hard as iron. "If I'm a coward, what are you?" Dauntrey retorted.
It's not very far beyond the frontier." "Good! That simplifies matters. Dauntrey can easily run back to Monte to-morrow and get his money. When are you starting, dear?" "I must find out about trains. And before I leave, I have to go to the Galerie Charles Trois and get a jeweller there to take back one or two pieces of jewellery, for I must have some money.
And something was said by gossips who did not know much, about a first husband who had been "a doctor in some God-forsaken hole." Perhaps that was true, people told each other; and if so, it explained how she and Dauntrey had met; because it was generally understood that he had been, or tried to be, a doctor in South Africa.
Lady Dauntrey told anecdotes of the "Rooms," as if to show that she was not ignorant of the place; but Lord Dauntrey said nothing unless he were addressed, and then answered in as few words as possible. Nevertheless he had something of that old-world courtesy which Mary had been taught, and she felt an odd, instinctive sympathy with him.