December Love Part 4

"Do I know them?"

"Probably. Mrs. Ackroyde?"

"I know her."

"Lady Archie Brook?"

"Her, too."

"I've also seen Lady Wrackley."

"I have met Lady Wrackley, but I can hardly say I know her. Still, she shows her teeth at me when I come into a room where she is."

"They are wonderful teeth, aren't they?"

"Astonishing!"

"And they are her own--not by purchase."

"Are you sure she doesn't owe for them?"

"Positive; except, of course, to her Creator. Isn't it wonderful to think that those three women are contemporaries of Lady Sellingworth?"

"Indeed it is! But surely you didn't let them know that you knew they were? Or shall I say know they are?"

She smiled, showing perfect teeth, and shook her corn-coloured head.

"You see, I'm so young and live in Paris! And then I'm American. They have no idea how much I know. I just let them suppose that I only knew they were old enough to remember Lady Sellingworth when she was still a reigning beauty. I implied that _they_ were buds then."

"And they accepted the implication?"

"Oh, they are women of the world! They just swallowed it very quietly, as a well-bred person swallows a small easy-going bonbon."

Craven could not help laughing. As he did so he saw in Miss Van Tuyn's eyes the thought:

"You think me witty, and you're not far out."

"And did you glean any knowledge of Lady Sellingworth?" he asked.

"Oh, yes; quite a good deal. Mrs. Ackroyde showed me a photograph of her as she was about eleven years ago."

"A year before the plunge!"

"Yes. She looked very handsome in the photograph. Of course, it was tremendously touched up. Still, it gave me a real idea of what she must once have been. But, oh! how she has changed!"

"Naturally!"

"I mean in expression. In the photograph she looks vain, imperious. Do you know how a woman looks who is always on the watch for new lovers?"

"Well--yes, I think perhaps I do."

"Lady Sellingworth in the photograph has that on the pounce expression."

"That's rather awful, isn't it?"

"Yes; because, of course, one can see she isn't really at all young.

It's only a _fausse jeunesse_ after all, but still very effective. The gap between the woman of the photograph and the woman of 18A Berkeley Square is as the gulf between Dives and Lazarus. I shouldn't have loved her then. But perhaps--perhaps a man might have thought he did. I mean in the real way of a man--perhaps."

Craven did not inquire what Miss Van Tuyn meant exactly by that.

Instead, he asked:

"And did these ladies of the 'old guard' speak kindly of the white-haired traitress?"

"They were careful. But I gathered that Lady Sellingworth had been for years and years one of those who go on their way chanting, 'Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.' I gathered, too, that her efforts were chiefly concentrated on translating into appropriate action the third 'let us.' But that no doubt was for the sake of her figure and face. Lady Archie said that the motto of Lady Sellingworth's life at that period was 'after me the deluge,' and that she had so dinned it into the ears of her friends that when she let her hair grow white they all instinctively put up umbrellas."

"And yet the deluge never came."

"It never does. I could almost wish it would."

"Now?"

"No; after me."

He looked deep into her eyes, and as he did so she seemed deliberately to make them more profound so that he might not touch bottom.

"It's difficult to think of an after you," he said.

"But there will be, I suppose, some day when the Prince of Wales wears a grey beard and goes abroad in the winter to escape bronchial troubles.

Oh, dear! What a brute Time is!"

She tried to look pathetic, and succeeded better than Craven had expected.

"I shall put up my _en tout cas_ then," said Craven very seriously.

Still looking pathetic, she allowed her eyes to stray to a neighbouring mirror, waited for a moment, then smiled.

"Time's a brute, but there's still plenty of him for me," she said. "And for you, too."

"He isn't half so unpleasant to men as to women," said Craven. "He makes a very unfair distinction between the s.e.xes."

"Naturally--because he's a man."

"What did Lady Wrackley say?" asked Craven, returning to their subject.

"Why do you ask specially what she said?"

"Because she has a reputation, a bad one, for speaking her mind."