Part 62

“What’s her husband?” asked Dolly suddenly.

“Her husband,” I rejoined, “is nothing at all.”

Dolly, receiving this answer, looked at me with a pathetic air.

“It’s not quite fair,” she observed. “Do you know what I’m thinking about, Mr. Carter?”

“Certainly I do, Lady Mickleham. You are thinking that you would like to meet me for the first time.”

“Not at all. I was thinking that it would be amusing if you met me for the first time.”

I said nothing. Dolly rose and walked to the window. She swung the tassel of the blind and it bumped against the window. The failing sun caught her ruddy brown hair. There were curls on her forehead, too.

“It’s a grand world,” said I. “And, after all, one can grow old very gradually.”

“You’re not really old,” said Dolly, with the fleetest glance at me. A glance should not be over-long.

“Gradually and disgracefully,” I murmured.

“If you met me for the first time--” said Dolly, swinging the tassel.

“By Heaven, it should be the last!” I cried, and I rose to my feet.

Dolly let the tassel go, and made me a very pretty curtsey.

“I am going to another party tonight,” said I, nodding my head significantly.

“Ah!” said Dolly.

“And I shall again,” I pursued, “spend my time with the prettiest woman in the room.”

“Shall you?” asked Dolly, smiling.

“I am a very fortunate fellow,” I observed. “And as for Mrs. Hilary, she may say what she likes.”

“Oh, does Mrs. Hilary know the Other Lady?”

I walked toward the door.

“There is,” said I, laying my hand on the door, “no Other Lady.”

“I shall get there about eleven,” said Dolly.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Unfortunately it was Sunday; therefore the gardeners could not be ordered to shift the long row of flower pots from the side of the terrace next the house, where Dolly had ordered them to be put, to the side remote from the house, where Dolly now wished them to stand. Yet Dolly could not think of living with the pots where they were till Monday. It would kill her, she said. So Archie left the cool shade of the great trees, where Dolly sat doing nothing, and Nellie Phaeton sat splicing the gig whip, and I lay in a deck chair with something iced beside me. Outside the sun was broiling hot and poor Archie mopped his brow at every weary journey across the broad terrace.

“It’s a burning’ shame, Dolly,” said Miss Phaeton. “I wouldn’t do it if I were him.”

“Oh, yes, you would, dear,” said Dolly. “The pots looked atrocious on that side.”

I took a long sip from my glass, and observed in a meditative tone:

“There but for the grace of woman, goes Samuel Travers Carter.”