"No, you need not," reassured Bertha. "I don't think she sounds at all violent. There's a ring."
Almost immediately afterwards the servant announced "Mr. Nigel Hillier."
Nigel Hillier came in cheerily and gaily, brimming over with vitality and in the highest spirits. At present he was like sunshine and fresh air. There was a lurking danger that as he grew older he might become breezy. But as yet there was no sign of a draught. He was just delightfully exhilarating. He was not what women call handsome or divine, but he was rather what men call a smart-looking chap: fair, with bright blue eyes, and the most mischievous smile in London. He was unusually rapid in thought, speech and movement, without being restless, and his presence was an excellent cure for slackness, languor, strenuousness or a morbid sense of duty.
"You look as if you had only just got up," remarked Bertha, as she gave him her hand. "Not a bit as though you'd been through the fatigues and worries and the heat and burden of the day."
"Oh, that's too bad!" he answered. "You know perfectly well I always get up in time to see the glorious sunset! Why this reproach? I don't know that I've ever seen you very early in the day; I always regard you less as a daughter of the morning than as a minion of the moon."
"How is Mrs. Hillier?" replied Bertha rather coldly.
"All right--I promise I won't. Mary? Why Mary is well--very well--but just, perhaps, a teeny bit trying--just a shade wearing. No--no, I don't mean that. ... Well, I'm at your service for the play and so on. Shall I write to Rupert Denison and Miss Irwin? And will you all come and dine with me, and where shall we go?"
"Don't you think something thrilling and exciting and emotional--or, perhaps, something light and frivolous?"
"For Rupert I advise certainly the trivial, the flippant. It would have a better effect. Why not go to the new Revue--'_That will be Fourpence_'--where they have the two young Simultaneous Dancers, the Misses Zanie and Lunie Le Face--one, I fancy, is more simultaneous than the other, I forget which. They are delightful, and will wake Denison up. In fact, I don't know who they _wouldn't_ wake up, they make such a row. They dance and sing, about Dixie and Honey and coons--and that sort of thing. They sing quite well, too--I mean for them."