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Updated: June 27, 2025
Both of them looked rather pathetic. Mrs. Wolfstein was not far off, standing in the midst of a group and holding forth with almost passionate vivacity and self-possession. Her husband was gliding sideways through the crowd with his peculiarly furtive and watchful air, which always suggested the old nursery game, "Here I am on Tom Tiddler's ground, picking up gold and silver."
Wolfstein was not sensitive. She chattered gaily all the way to the Haymarket. When they came into the Palm Court they found Lady Cardington already there, seated tragically in an armchair, and looking like a weary empress.
The sensation passed, but the fact that it had ever been did not draw Lady Holme any closer to the woman with the "pawnbroking expression" in her eyes. Mrs. Wolfstein was not in the most exclusive set in London, but she was in the smart set, which is no longer exclusive although it sometimes hopes it is.
Wolfstein and Lady Holme on the other, between her and Mrs. Trent. Miss Schley was exactly opposite. She kept her eyes eternally cast down like a nun at Benediction. All the quite young men who could see her were looking at her with keen interest, and two or three of them probably up from Sandhurst had already assumed expressions calculated to alarm modesty.
"The virtues are often more comic than the vices," said Mrs. Trent, with calm authority. "Dramatists know that. Think of the dozens of good farces whose foundation is supreme respectability in contact with the wicked world." "I didn't know anyone called respectability a virtue," cried Sally Perceval. "Oh, all the English do in their hearts," said Mrs. Wolfstein.
She wondered whether Miss Schley recognised the likeness. But of course people had spoken to her about it. Mrs. Wolfstein was her bosom friend. The Jewess had met her first at Carlsbad and, with that terrible social flair which often dwells in Israel, had at once realised her fitness for a London success and resolved to "get her over."
'Pon my soul, your vanity's disgustin'. A plain woman like you ought to keep away from such things leave 'em to the Mrs. Wolfsteins what?" Lady Holme turned round in time to see her husband's blunt, brown features twisted in the grimace which invariably preceded his portentous laugh. "I admire Mrs. Wolfstein," she said. The laugh burst like a bomb. "You admire another woman!
Everything would be most satisfactory if only Lady Holme were not tiresome about the Cadogan Square door. "She hates you, Pimpernel," said Mrs. Wolfstein to her friend. "Why?" drawled Miss Schley. "You know why perfectly well. You reproduce her looks. I'm perfectly certain she's dreading your first night.
He was well dressed, but there was a touch of horseyness in the cut of his trousers, the arrangement of his tie. He sat close to the band, tipping his green chair backwards and smoking a cigarette. As Mrs. Wolfstein and Lady Holme went up to greet Lady Cardington, Sally Perceval and Mrs. Trent came in together, followed almost immediately by Lady Manby.
Having arrived early in the year, she had nearly three months of idleness to enjoy. Her conversation with Mrs. Wolfstein took place in the latter days of March. And it was just at this period that Lady Holme began seriously to debate whether she should, or should not, open her door to the American. She knew Miss Schley was determined to come to her house.
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