To which Feo replied, with her most courteous insolence, “Out, Mr. Macquarie,” touched Arrowsmith’s arm and went.
But the nasty familiarity of that most poisonous bounder did something queer to Arrowsmith’s physical sense, and he couldn’t for the life of him play conversational ball with Feo on the road home. “To follow _that_,” he thought, and was nauseated.
But Feo was in her softest, her most feminine mood. After dinner she was going to dance with this man and be held in his arms. It was a delightful surprise to discover that she possessed a heart. She had begun to doubt it. She had been an experimentalist hitherto. And so she didn’t have much to say. And when they emerged from the squalor of Hammersmith and were passing Queen’s Road, Bayswater, the picture of Lola came suddenly into her mind, the girl in love, and she wondered sympathetically how she was getting on. “What shall I wear to-night? I hate those new frocks.—I hope the band plays Bohème at the Ritz.—No diamonds, just pearls. He’s a pearl man, I think. And I’ll brush Peau d’Espagne through my hair. What a profile he has,—Cupid.”
And she shuddered. She had married a profile, the fool. To be set free was impossible. The British public did not allow its Cabinet Ministers to be divorced.
At Dover Street Arrowsmith sprang from the car. He handed Feo out and rang the doorbell.
“You look white,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
He was grateful for the chance. “That old wound,” he said. “It goes back on me from time to time.”
“That doesn’t mean that you’ll have to chuck tonight?” She was aghast.
“I’m awfully afraid so, if you don’t mind. It means bed, instantly, and a doctor. Do forgive me. I can’t help myself. I wish to God I could.”
She swallowed an indescribable disappointment and said “Good night, then. So sorry. Ring me up in the morning and let me know how you feel.”
But she knew that he wouldn’t. It was written round his mouth. And as she went upstairs she whipped herself and cursed Macquarie and looked back at her kite-tail of indiscriminations with overwhelming regret. Arrowsmith was a pucca man.
Ernest Treadwell watched the car come and go.
Lola had given out at home that she was to be away with Lady Feo, but that morning he had seen in the paper that her ladyship was in town. She had “been seen” dining at Hurlingham after the polo match with Major Clive Arrowsmith, D. S. O., late Grenadier Guards. Dying to see Lola, to break the wonderful news that his latest sonnet on Death had been printed by the _Westminster Gazette_, the first of his efforts to find acceptance in any publication, Treadwell had hurried to Dover Street, had ventured to present himself at the area door and had been told by Ellen that Lola was away on a holiday.