Trailing her daughter behind her, the duchess sailed from the room. Father and son were alone.
“Nice girl,” Mr. Beamish remarked, as the door closed.
“A peach. And so chatty.”
“Now see that you make up to her at luncheon. There is nothing like catching a girl on the fly.”
“Give me a hundred thousand a year, and catch her yourself, then. Matrimony, with a pretty girl at the other end, must be jolly good fun. But with her! Caesar’s ghost! It would be medicine. That’s the truth.”
“It is, is it? Well, I want obedience also. You may take your medicine or your walking-stick. Just say which, and be quick.”
Harry glared about the room. Through its cream, and gold, and tender pink, the future surged. Divested of its garland of millions that future looked quite bleak.
Mr. Beamish stamped a foot.
“Which?”
“Medicine,” the boy answered, savagely. “I’ll be shot, though, if I don’t take it in capsules.”
“Don’t be slangy,” retorted the plutocrat, in whose phraseology capsules had no definite meaning.
“Scat!” cried Harry. “There’s that beastly cat again.”
From beyond there filtered anew a shrill meow. But immediately a door opened. The duchess, trailing her daughter, reappeared, and, presently, during an interchange of uplifting intellectualities, the street was reached, the auto hummed into the Champs Élysées, bowled down the avenue, and drew up at Paillard’s.
The canopied terrace was filled with people of manifest distinction, with horizontales and femmes du monde, exotics and cercleux, diplomats, and rastas. From a hall adjoining there issued the murmur of harps, the kiss of flutes, the caress of clinging measures. In the air was the savor of pineapples, the smell of orris, the odor of food and flowers, of pretty women and smart men, the atmosphere of what the French call High Life, and pronounce Hig Leaf. Mr. Beamish inhaled it voluptuously. Preceded by two maîtres d’hôtel, he led his guests to a table.
“Do you chauffe?” Harry asked Angelica, when all were seated.
“Do you, Mr. Harry?” the duchess inquired, in her stead. “I have not let my little girl learn yet, but she is passionately fond of collecting postage stamps, and that, I think, shows so much adaptability. But automobiling is very jolly, is it not?”
“It beats bridge,” Harry answered. “Wouldn’t you like to learn,” he continued, turning to the girl.
The Lady Angelica could not speak; her mouth was full of melon.
“That is the King of the Belgians,” said the duchess, indicating a voluminously bearded old party, who was being helped to a chair near by. “And is not that Mr. Astor, over there? We used to think,” she continued, expansively, “that he might marry among us. But his daughter will. Our young men have such a fondness for your pretty compatriots, and that, I think, shows so much entente cordiale. No, Mr. Beamish, no champagne; a drop of Eau de Vals if you will. After Paget, and Essex, and Craven and Curzon, then Marlborough, and, recently, Manchester, not to speak of my brother, who married a New Yorker, a Mrs. Morningside, of Morningside Park, a widow, with a daughter, such a dear, too, who, I fancy, will marry among us also. You know my brother, do you not, Mr. Beamish? But fair exchange, I often think, is not snobbery; is it, Mr. Harry? And does it not seem to you as though some of you young Americans should begin now, and lay siege to our lovely English girls. Thank you, a bit of the wing, nothing else.”
Harry turned anew to the Lady Angelica. “How would you like to be besieged by an American?” he asked, seductively.
The girl flushed. Apparently, she was about to reply, but British reserve may have prevented. She flushed afresh and looked away.
With superior tact the duchess intervened. “Tell me, Mr. Harry, is not that your ambassador over there?”
Harry turned. As he did so he heard a little plaintive cry. He turned again.
“The large, handsome man near the entrance,” the duchess insistently continued, and actually pointed with her fan.
Harry was forced to turn once more. The cry was repeated, but less plaintively, in a note louder and more shrill.
Again Harry turned. Others were turning, too. The King wheeled in his chair. A cocotte near him put her glasses up.
Angelica’s face was hid by a fan. Her thin frame shook. She seemed convulsed with laughter, with a churchlike desire to conceal it, too. Mr. Beamish was examining his fork as though it were a great curiosity.
In hasty astonishment an omnibus began ferreting under the table. With the same superior tact the duchess waved him away.
“Ce n’est rien,” she announced. “Une petite Angora, voilà tout. Angelica, you ought not to have brought her. Mr. Harry, would you be good enough, that is, my man out there”—as she spoke she motioned at the street—“would you mind fetching him? I will send Posey home by him. Poor, dear, little thing, it is the smell of ris de veau. She just dotes on ris de veau.”
“And that,” said Harry, in open mimic of the duchess, “shows, I think, such a candid nature.”
He got from his seat and made for the entrance. But in the street he discovered that he must have misunderstood the lady. The man he fancied hers spoke no human tongue. He bothered for a moment or two with another servant, but the latter turned out to be the King’s.
Harry started to go back. As he did so, he beheld the duchess entering a cab that stood a trifle beyond. Angelica was at her heels. Mr. Beamish was helping them both.
Harry hurried forward. “You are not going to take Posey home, are you?” he asked, a hand on the door. “Why, give her to me. I’ll do it myself. Where is she?”
He looked from mother to daughter. Both
