Lightly, in her most worldly manner, Violet laughed.
“Never in the world! A woman should never let herself go—except in an aeroplane. At a pinch a four-in-hand might do, but—”
At the moment the lady was thoroughly en veine and, sure of victory, might have bantered on, but this, Aurelia, ushered by Parker, prevented.
Sharply Violet threw at her: “Where have you been?”
Ignoring Violet, Aurelia nodded at Leilah.
“I was here the other day, did they tell you?”
She turned and with blithe impertinence looked her sister up and down.
“Don’t be so ordinary as to ask a girl where she has been. If you are inquisitive, ask where she is going, and, if you ask me, I’ll tell you. I am going to become—”
“Yes, yes.” Violet impatiently interrupted. “We’ve heard all that. You’re going to become a star. I know what kind too—a fallen star.”
A fresher smile bubbled about Aurelia’s delicious mouth.
“It pleases your ladyship to jest. I am to become the Princess Farnese!”
“Merciful heavens!” Violet exclaimed, turning as she spoke to Leilah. “She’ll go in to dinner before me!”
But Leilah who, after a word of greeting to Aurelia, had, from the table before her, taken and reopened the Paramitas, perhaps did not hear.
Violet turned again to her sister. “When did he propose?”
With an air of amused contempt, again Aurelia looked her up and down.
“How antiquated you are! Don’t you know that all that sort of thing has gone out?”
“Do you mean that he didn’t propose?”
“Of course not. I proposed to him.”
“What?”
“He was so coy about it, too,” Aurelia, quite as though she were eating sweetmeats, resumed. “He asked me all about my finances, what settlements I would make and whether I would object if he kept a separate establishment. You can’t really fancy how coy he was. He quite blushed and stammered, the poor thing.”
“I should think he might.”
“Yes, indeed. He asked me if I had spoken to his mamma, and I told him that while it was perhaps incorrect of me to speak to him in the first instance, yet that there could be no real love without a mutual misunderstanding, and now that we had one I would make a formal demand of the old lady today.”
Aurelia, executing a little pas, added: “I have just seen her.”
“Well?”
“She said: ‘And so you want my little boy for your husband.’ Partly that I told her, but partly also I want you for mother-in-law. You should have seen her lick her chops over that. Then she asked me about my affections. I told her they were just like the fashions. They came and went.”
“She must have been delighted.”
“She hugged me. Then, of course, I asked about him. She told me that he has just been named as corespondent in the Kincardine divorce suit, and I said that that was perfectly satisfactory.”
“What!”
“Perfectly satisfactory. It appears that the poor boy can’t remember whether the charge is true or false and that I think is so dear of him.”
Violet, rising, extended her arms. “Aurelia, I have been wrong, I have misjudged you. Come to me.”
But Aurelia, moving back, waved her away. “You’ll only muss me. Now I must run. I must break the news to Parsnips. Will you come, Vi?”
“In a moment.” Violet answered. “Wait for me in the brougham. There is something I want to say to Leilah.”
Endearingly the ingénue smiled. “Something I ought not to hear, I suppose.” In speaking she made for the door. “The amount of things I ought not to hear and do hear is simply amazing.”
As the portières fell on her gracile back, Violet, with a gesture which, for so warlike a lady, resembled defeat, reseating herself, exclaimed:
“Frankly, she is impossible.”
At once though, buckling anew for the fray, she aimed at Leilah and fired.
“So are you.”
Leilah, who had been considering the Paramitas, started at the attack which instantly was followed up by another.
“Do you know anything about the code here, the law code, I mean. Do you?”
Leilah, a bit bewildered, shook her head. “No, that is, very little.”
Violet’s eyes fairly snapped. “I congratulate you. A little is sometimes a great deal. I also know a little and that little is, well, immense, so enormous even that because of it I am in a position to tell you that if you go with Verplank, Barouffski can, if he catches you, have you jailed.”
Gravely, with curious calm, Leilah looked at her.
Annoyed that the shot had fallen short, Violet aimed again.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said jailed. J-a-i-l-e-d! Now I may add for two years. That is what I meant when you spoke of your prison. I agreed with you that it must be dreadful to be in one. I said I daresay it is even worse than you think.”
Leilah half raised a hand. “But—”
Unheedingly Violet continued. “Now, as for Verplank, if Barouffski were to surprise him here with you he could kill you both, yes, and be acquitted. But you—I have told you what he can do. Moreover, if he so much as suspects you, he can call the police. But excuse me. You were saying?”
“Nothing of any moment.”
But Violet persisted. “What was it?”
“Merely that during the Terror a woman went to the guillotine smelling a rose.”
At this flank movement Violet winced, but she rallied.
“Yes and rehearsed the act beforehand. They all did. The great ladies of the period rehearsed for the guillotine that they might die, as they had lived, with grace. Those were the good old days. These are the bad new ones. Anything of the kind would be ridiculous now.”
To this, gravely as before, Leilah assented. “No doubt. But aren’t you rather rambling about the grounds? It seems to me that you also have something up your sleeve.”
Violet rose to the challenge. “Something! I have the entire pharmacopoeia. In it is a remedy heroic but sovereign. If you’ll take it, it may maim but it will cure.”
Leilah, well
