She pulled herself out of her absorption and laughed.
"Don't expect me to analyze him, Bobby. He is past that."
"Good, if making havoc of my nerve centres is any test."
"Then you really liked him? I thought you didn't want to come."
"I didn't. Nothing but a stern sense of duty brought me; but it also brought its own reward. One hears such a voice only once a decade."
"Sure this is yourself, Beatrix? I thought you scoffed at all baritones, and only delighted in maudlin tenors and anticking sopranos. I have hopes of you yet; but whence comes your conversion?"
"From this man, Mr. ----." She referred to the programme in her hand.
"Thayer," her cousin prompted. "Cotton Mather Thayer."
"For a punster, you'd better say; but at least one can't doubt its genuineness. If he had been going to assume a stage name, he would have chosen something more romantic."
"Who is he, and where did Mrs. Stanley accumulate him?"
Bobby rolled his eyes expressively towards the portly, satin-clad figure of his hostess.
"Mrs. Stanley hunts every lion that comes to Manhattan Island. As a rule, she catches only cubs; this is the exception which proves the rule."
"No; Thayer is a brand-new lion, but fully grown. Of course, with that name, his family tree sprouted in Massachusetts; but he has been in Germany and Italy for years. He only landed, the third, and is to make his formal début at the Lloyd Avalons's on the twentieth. Don't you want to meet him?"
"N--no. I am afraid it would be anticlimax."
"Not a bit of it. He doesn't indulge in speckled neckties and an imperial. He is a man, as well as a singer."
"Yes, as one knows any number of people. Lorimer has had him at the club occasionally, and I have met him there."
"Lorimer knew him well in Germany. Come and help burn incense before him, and do try to say something rational. Those fellows must get deadly sick of the inanities people talk when they are being introduced. If you make a good impression, perhaps I'll bring him around, some Monday."
"Wait till you see what impression he makes, Bobby. I'm not Mrs. Stanley, you know, and I'm not stalking any lions."
Even while he laughed at the sudden hauteur of her tone, he allowed his glance to wander over her with manifest approval.