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Prohack admitted, his tone implying that while putting Lady Massulam in a class apart, he had wit enough to put his wife too in a class apart, the subtlest thing. "I quite expected to meet you again in Frinton," said Lady Massulam simply. "How abrupt you are in your methods!" "Only when it's a case of self-preservation," Mr. Prohack responded, gazing at her with daring significance.
"Don't get excited. I've thought of all that already, and I've taken measures to guard against it. I'm going to give Charlie my secretary. She'll see that Lady Massulam doesn't make any more headway, trust her!" "Arthur, how clever you are! Nobody but you would have thought of that. But isn't it a bit dangerous, too? You see don't you?" Mr. Prohack shook his head.
"I'm going to talk to Mrs. Prohack," said Lady Massulam, rising. But before she left him she murmured confidentially in his ear: "Where's your son?" "Don't know. Why? "I don't think he's come yet. I'm afraid the poor hoy's affairs are not very bright." "I shall look after him," said Mr. Prohack, grandly. A qualm did pierce him at the sound of her words, but he would not be depressed.
Prohack self-consciously carried his lankness and his big head across to Lady Massulam's table. She looked up at him with a composed but romantic smile. That is to say that Mr. Prohack deemed it romantic; and he leaned over the table and over Lady Massulam in a manner romantic to match. "I'm just going off," said she. Simple words, from a portly and mature lady yet for Mr.
"Yes," murmured Mr. Prohack, "I've been feeling the danger ever since dinner. Will you dance with me, not of course as a pleasure I won't flatter myself but as a means of salvation?" The dowager bore down with a most definite suggestion for bridge in the card-room. Lady Massulam definitely stated that she was engaged to dance....
And inexperienced Charlie was a poor host; as a host he was positively pathetic, rivalling Lady Massulam in taciturnity. Sissie took to chaffing her brother, and after a time Charlie said suddenly, with curtness: "Have you dropped that silly dance-scheme of yours, kid?" Sissie was obliged to admit that she had. "Then I tell you what you might do. You might come and live here with me for a bit.
It flattered him; she liked him, though he had bought his peerage; he was a fine player so was she; and lastly they had had business relations, and financially Lord Partick watched over her as over a young girl. Mr. Prohack was relieved thus to learn that Lady Massulam had not strolled into the Majestic Hotel, Frinton, to play bridge with nobody in particular.
"Your son," said Lady Massulam, in a familiar tone, but most reassuringly like an aunt of Charlie's, after she had explained how they had met in Glasgow through being distantly connected by the same business deal, and how she had been impressed by Charlie's youthful capacity, "your son has very great talent for big affairs, but he is now playing a dangerous game far more dangerous than he imagines, and he will not be warned.
"Lady Massulam happened to tell me once that you'd been selling something before you knew how much it would cost you to buy it. Of course I don't pretend to understand finance myself I'm only a civil servant on the shelf but to my limited intelligence such a process of putting the cart before the horse seemed likely to lead to trouble," said Mr. Prohack, as it were ruminating. "Oh!
"Your wife is wonderful!" said Lady Massulam, as though teaching him to appreciate his wife and indicating that she alone had the right thus to teach him, the subtlest thing. "I've never seen an evening better done reussie." "She is rather wonderful," Mr.
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