“I needn’t worry you with any of the details of the new political situation, Lady Feo. You know them, probably, as well as I do. But what you don’t know, because the moment isn’t yet ripe for the publication of our plans, is that Mr. Fallaray has been chosen to lead the Anti-waste Party, which is concentrating its forces to rout the old gang out of politics at the next General Election, give Parliament back its lost prestige, and do away with the pernicious influence of the Press Lords. A big job, by Jove, which Fallaray alone can achieve.”
“Well?” repeated Feo, wondering what in the world this preamble had to do with the case in question.
“Well, at the end of the meeting of my party yesterday, I was sent down to Chilton Park to tell Mr. Fallaray our plans. I was stultified to be told that he had decided to chuck politics.”
“And go in for love. Yes, I know. But what has this got to do with Lola,—with Madame de Brézé?”
That was the point that beat Feo, the thing that filled her with a sort of impatient astonishment. Was this uncommunicative girl, who seemed to her to be so essentially feminine, whose métier in life was obviously to purr under the touch of a masculine hand, who had been given a holiday to go on a love chase with Chalfont, presumably, somehow connected with politics? It was incredible.
“Yes, my dear man, yes! He broke the news to me the moment he came in,”
“But—my dear young Lochinvar, may I make so bold as to ask why this perfectly personal matter has to be discussed in the open, so to speak?” She made her meaning unmistakably clear. This girl was not so close a friend as he might have been led to suppose.
“What did you say to Mr. Fallaray?” asked Lola, leaning forward eagerly.
And Lytham waited with equal anxiety for an answer.
It did not come for an extraordinary moment and only then in the form of a tangent. Feo turned slowly round to the girl who was in the habit of dressing her and putting her to bed. With raised eyebrows and an air of amused amazement, she ran her eyes over every inch of her, as though trying very hard to find something to palliate the insufferable cheek that she was apparently expected to swallow.
“My good Lola,” she said finally, “what the devil has this got to do with you?”