Lord Brackenthorpe said he knew a clever artist chap, who had drawn a sketch of about a thousand people crowding over one another, in an American hotel, in order to see a boy, who had been overheard asking his mother what was the meaning of the word dyspepsia.
Mrs. Mowbray wondered if the melancholy of Hamlet was due to a weak digestion.
Harold said he thought it should rather be accepted as evidence that there was a Schleswig-Holstein question even in Hamlet’s day.
Meantime, the pheasants and sparkling red Burgundy were affording compensation for the absence of any brilliant talk.
Then the young men lit their cigarettes. Mrs. Mowbray had never been known to risk her reputation (for femininity) by letting a cigarette between her lips; but her femininity was in no way jeopardized--rather was it accentuated--by her liking to be in the neighbourhood of where cigarettes were being smoked--that is, when the cigarettes were good and when the smokers were pleasant young men with titles, or even unpleasant young men with thousands.
After the lapse of an hour, a message came regarding Mrs. Mowbray’s brougham. Her guests rose and she looked about for her wrap.
While Harold Wynne was laying it on her lovely shoulders, she kept her eyes fixed upon his. Hers were full of intelligence. When he had carefully fastened the gold clasp just beneath the hollow of her throat--it required very careful handling--she poised her head to the extent of perhaps a quarter of an inch to one side, and laughed; then she moved away from him, but turned her head so that her face was once more over her shoulder, like the face of the Greuze girl from whom she had learnt the trick.
He knew that she wanted him to ask her from whom she had heard the stories regarding Castle Innisfail and its guests.
He also knew that the reason she wanted him to ask her this question, was in order that she might have the delight of refusing to answer him, while keeping him in the expectancy of receiving an answer.
Such a delight would, of course, be a malicious one. But he knew that it would be a thoroughly womanly one, and he knew that Mrs. Mowbray was a thorough woman.
Therefore he laughed back at her and did not ask her anything--not even to take his arm out to her brougham.