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Then he told Mortimer to be ready at nine o'clock, turned on his heel with a curt word to the Japanese, descended to the street, entered his motor-car again, and sped away to the Hotel Santa Regina. Miss Caithness was at home, came the message in exchange for his cards for Agatha and Mrs. Vendenning.
Vendenning and Major Belwether and the Tassel girl convoyed by Leroy Mortimer. Farther along the line, taking post, she saw Quarrier and Miss Caithness, Captain Voucher with Mrs. Mortimer, and others too distant to recognise, moving across country with glitter and glint of sunlight on slanting gun barrels.
Vendenning, gathering up the packs for a new shuffle: "Grace Ferrall doesn't fancy Howard's attention to you and she's beginning to say so. When you go back to Shotover you'd better let him alone." "I'm not going back to Shotover," said Agatha. "What?" "No; I don't think so. However, I'll let you know to-morrow. It all depends but I don't expect to." She turned as her maid tapped on the door.
It's interesting, isn't it, merely to sit here and count coteries! There is Mrs. Vendenning and Gladys Orchil of the Black Fells set; there is that pretty Mrs. Delmour-Carnes; Newport! Here come some Cedarhurst people the Fleetwoods. It always surprises one to see them out of the saddle.
Cards had come for the Caithness function; cards for young Austin Wadsworth's wedding to a Charleston girl of rumoured beauty; Caragnini was to sing for Mrs. Vendenning; a live llama, two-legged, had consented to undermine Christianity for Mrs. Pyne-Johnson and her guests. "Would Sylvia be ready for the inspection of imported head-gears to harmonise with the gowns being built by Constantine?
"Oh, Captain Voucher. Are you at home to him?" flipping the pasteboard onto the table among the scattered cards. "Yes," said Mrs. Vendenning aggressively, "unless you expect him to flop down on his knees to-night. Do you?" "I don't to-night. Perhaps to-morrow. I don't know; I can't tell yet." And to her maid she nodded that they were at home to Captain Voucher.
Vendenning, who adored bishops, immediately remembered him among those asked to her famous annual bal poudré; a celebrated yacht club admitted him to membership; a whole shoal of excellent minor clubs which really needed new members followed suit, and even the rock-ribbed Lenox, wearied of its own time-honoured immobility, displayed the preliminary fidgets which boded well for the stolid candidate.
"I think," she said to her reflected figure in the glass, "I think that you are either mentally ill or inherently a kind of devil. And I don't much care which." And she turned leisurely, her slim hands balanced lightly on her narrow hips, and strolled into the second dressing-room, where Mrs. Vendenning sat sullenly indulging in that particular species of solitaire known as "The Idiot's Delight."
"Who is she?" she asked in a colourless voice. "Tell me, for I don't know. Agatha? Mrs. Vendenning? or the Tassel girl?" "Nobody yet," he admitted cheerfully. "Nobody yet," she repeated, musing over her cigarette. "That's good politics, if it's true." "Am I untruthful?" he asked simply. "I don't know. Are you? You're a man." "Don't talk that way, Leila." "No, I won't.
He entered the gilded elevator, stepped out on the sixth floor into a tiny, rococo, public reception-room. Nobody was there besides himself; Agatha's maid came presently, and he turned and followed her into the large and very handsome parlour belonging to the suite which Agatha was occupying with Mrs. Vendenning for the few days that they were to stop in town.
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