The Greatest Works of E. F. Benson (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson

listened for a second, and then gave a curtsey.

      "Oh, is it you, ma'am?" she said, holding the mouthpiece a little obliquely. "Yes, I'm Mrs Lucas."

      A rather gruff noise, clearly Peppino's voice, came from the instrument, but she trusted it was inaudible to the others, and she soon broke in again talking very rapidly.

      "Oh, that is kind of you, your Highness," she said. "It would be too delightful. Tomorrow: charmed. Delighted."

      She replaced the mouthpiece, and instantly began to talk again from the point at which she had left off.

      "Yes, and of course Herbert Alton was there," she said. "His show opens in a fortnight, and how we shall all meet there at the private view and laugh at each other's caricatures! What is it that Rousseau — is it Rousseau? — says, about our not being wholly grieved at the misfortunes of our friends? So true! Bertie is rather wicked sometimes though, but still one forgives him everything. Ah, the coffee is boiling at last."

      Peppino, as Lucia had foreseen, rang up again almost immediately, and she told him he had missed the most charming little lunch-party, because he would go to his club. Her guests, of course, were burning to know to whom she had curtsied, but Lucia gave no information on the point. Adele Brixton and Aggie presently went off to a matinée, but Stephen remained behind. That looked rather well, Lucia thought, for she had noticed that often a handsome and tolerably young man lingered with the hostess when other guests had gone. There was something rather chic about it; if it happened very constantly, or if at another house they came together or went away together, people would begin to talk, quite pleasantly of course, about his devotion to her. Georgie had been just such a cavaliere servente. Stephen, for his part, was quite unconscious of any such scintillations in Lucia's mind: he merely knew that it was certainly convenient for an unattached man to have a very pleasant house always to go to, where he would be sure of hearing things that interested Hermione.

      "Delicious little lunch-party," he said. "What a charming woman Lady Brixton is."

      "Dear Adele," said Lucia dreamily. "Charming, isn't she? How pleased she was at the thought of meeting Alf! Do look in after dinner that night, Stephen. I wish I could ask you to dine, but I expect to be crammed as it is. Dine on Wednesday, though: let me see, Marcelle comes that night. What a rush next week will be!"

      Stephen waited for her to allude to the voice to which she had curtsied, but he waited in vain.

      Chapter Seven

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      This delicious little luncheon-party had violently excited Adele Brixton: she was thrilled to the marrow at Lucia's curtsey to the telephone.

      "My dear, she's marvellous," she said to Aggie. "She's a study. She's cosmic. The telephone, the curtsey! I've never seen the like. But why in the name of wonder didn't she tell us who the Highness was? She wasn't shy of talking about the other folk she'd met. Alf and Marcelle and Marcia and Bertie. But she made a mistake over Bertie. She shouldn't have said 'Bertie.' I've known Herbert Alton for years, and never has anybody called him anything but Herbert. 'Bertie' was a mistake, but don't tell her. I adore your Lucia. She'll go far, mark my words, and I bet you she's talking of me as Adele this moment. Don't you see how wonderful she is? I've been a climber myself and I know. But I was a snail compared to her."

      Aggie Sandeman was rather vexed at not being asked to the Alf party.

      "You needn't tell me how wonderful she is," she observed with some asperity. "It's not two months since she came to London first, and she didn't know a soul. She dined with me the first night she came up, and since then she has annexed every single person she met at my house."

      "She would," said Adele appreciatively. "And who was the man who looked as if he had been labelled 'Man' by mistake when he was born, and ought to have been labelled 'Lady'? I never saw such a perfect lady, though I only know him as Stephen at present. She just said, 'Stephen, do you know Lady Brixton?' "

      "Stephen Merriall," said Aggie. "Just one of the men who go out to tea every day — one of the unattached."

      "Well then, she's going to attach him," said Adele. "Dear me, aren't I poisonous, when I'm going to her house to meet Alf next week! But I don't feel poisonous; I feel wildly interested: I adore her. Here we are at the theatre: what a bore! And there's Tony Limpsfield. Tony, come and help me out. We've been lunching with the most marvellous —"

      "I expect you mean Lucia," said Tony. "I spent Sunday with her at Riseholme."

      "She curtsied to the telephone," began Adele.

      "Who was at the other end?" asked Tony eagerly.

      "That's what she didn't say," said Adele.

      "Why not?" asked Tony.

      Adele stepped briskly out of her car, followed by Aggie.

      "I can't make out," she said. "Oh, do you know Mrs Sandeman?"

      "Yes, of course," said Tony. "And it couldn't have been Princess Isabel."

      "Why not? She met her at Marcia's last night."

      "Yes, but the Princess fled from her. She fled from her at Riseholme too, and said she would never go to her house. It can't have been she. But she got hold of that boxer —"

      "Alf Watson," said Adele. "She called him Alf, and I'm going to meet him at her house on Thursday."

      "Then it's very unkind of you to crab her, Adele," said Tony.

      "I'm not: I'm simply wildly interested. Anyhow, what about you? You spent a Sunday with her at Riseholme."

      "And she calls you Tony," said Aggie vituperatively, still thinking about the Alf party.

      "No, does she really?" said Tony. "But after all, I call her Lucia when she's not there. The bell's gone, by the way: the curtain will be up."

      Adele hurried in.

      "Come to my box, Tony," she said, "after the first act. I haven't been so interested in anything for years."

      Adele paid no attention whatever to the gloomy play of Tchekov's. Her whole mind was concentrated on Lucia, and soon she leaned across to Aggie, and whispered: "I believe it was Peppino who rang her up."

      Aggie knitted her brows for a moment.

      "Couldn't have been," she said. "He rang her up directly afterwards."

      Adele's face fell. Not being able to think as far ahead as Lucia she didn't see the answer to that, and relapsed into Lucian meditation, till the moment the curtain fell, when Tony Limpsfield slid into their box.

      "I don't know what the play has been about," he said, "but I must tell you why she was at Marcia's last night. Some women chucked Marcia during the afternoon and made her thirteen —"

      "Marcia would like that," said Aggie.

      Tony took no notice of this silly joke.

      "So she rang up everybody in town —" he continued.

      "Except me," said Aggie bitterly.

      "Oh, never mind that," said Tony. "She rang up everybody, and couldn't get hold of anyone. Then she rang up Lucia."

      "Who instantly said she was disengaged, and rang me up to go to the theatre with Peppino," said Aggie. "I suspected something of the sort, but I wanted to see the play, and I wasn't going to cut off my nose to spite Lucia's face."

      "Besides, she would have got someone else, or sent Peppino to the play alone," said Tony. "And you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, Aggie. Nobody wants to spite Lucia. We all want her to have the most glorious time."

      "Aggie's vexed because she thinks she invented Lucia," observed Adele. "That's the wrong attitude altogether. Tell me about Pep."

      "Simply nothing to say about him," said Tony. "He has trousers and a