第98章

'Never heard anything equal to it yet in this world,' said Dolly.

'I wonder whether that's true about Coalheaver.'

'Tifto says so.'

'Which at the present moment,' asked Miss Boncassen, 'is the greater favourite with the public, Madame Scholzdam or Coalheaver?'

'Coalheaver is a horse.'

'Oh--a horse!'

'Perhaps I ought to say a colt.'

'Do you suppose, Dolly, that Miss Boncassen doesn't know all that?' asked Silverbridge.

'He supposes that my American ferocity has never been sufficiently softened for the reception of polite erudition.

'You two have been quarrelling, I fear.'

'I never quarrel with a woman,' said Dolly.

'Nor with a man in my presence, I hope, said Miss Boncassen.

'Somebody seems to have got out of bed at the wrong side,' said Silverbridge.

'I did,' said Miss Boncassen. 'I got out of bed at the wrong side.

I am cross. I can't get over the spoiling of my flounces. I think you had better both go away and leave me. If I could walk about the room for half an hour and stamp my feet, I should get better.'

Silverbridge thought that as he had come last, he certainly ought to be left last. Miss Boncassen felt that, at any rate, Mr Longstaff should go. Dolly felt that his manhood required him to remain. After what had taken place he was not going to leave the field vacant for another. Therefore he made no effort to move.

'That seems rather hard upon me,' said Silverbridge. 'You told me to come.'

'I told you to come and ask after us all. You have come and asked after us, and have been informed that we are very bad. What more can I say? you accuse me of getting out of bed the wrong side, and I own that I did.'

'I meant to say that Dolly Longstaff had done so.'

'And I say it was Silverbridge,' said Dolly.

'We are aren't very agreeable together, are we? Upon my word I think you'd better both go.' Silverbridge immediately got up from his chair; upon which Dolly also moved.

'What the mischief is up?' asked Silverbridge, when they were under the porch together.

'The truth is, you never can tell what you are to do with those American girls.'

'I suppose you have been making up to her.'

'Nothing in earnest. She seemed to me to like admiration, so I told her I admired her.'

'What did she say then?'

'Upon my word, you seem to be very great at cross-examining.

Perhaps you had better go back and ask her.'

'I will next time I see her.' Then he stepped into his cab, and in a loud voice ordered the man to drive him to the Zoo. But when he had gone a little way up Portland Place, he stopped the driver and desired that he might be taken back again to the hotel. As he left the vehicle he looked round for Dolly, but Dolly had certainly gone. Then he told the waiter to take his card to Miss Boncassen, and explain that he had something to say which he had forgotten.

'So you have come back again?' said Miss Boncassen, laughing.

'Of course I have. You didn't suppose I was going to let that fellow get the better of me. Why should I be turned out because he made an ass of himself?'

'Who said he made an ass of himself?'

'But he had; hadn't he?'

'No;--by no means,' said she after a little pause.

'Tell me what he had been saying.'

'Indeed I shall do nothing of the kind. If I told you all he said, then I should have to tell the next man all that you may say.

Would that be fair?'

'I should not mind,' said Silverbridge.

'I dare say not, because you have nothing particular to say. But the principle is the same. Lawyers and doctors and parsons talk of privileged communications. Why should not a young lady have her privileged communications?'

'But I have something particular to say.'

'I hope not.'

'Why should you hope not?'

'I hate having things said particularly. Nobody likes conversation so well as I do; but it should never be particular.'

'I was going to tell you that I came back to London yesterday in the same carriage with old Lady Clanfiddle, and that she swore that no consideration on earth would ever induce her to go to Maidenhead again.'

'That isn't particular.'

'She went on to say;--you won't tell of me, will you?'

'It shall be privileged.'

'She went on to say that Americans couldn't be expected to understand English manners.'

'Perhaps they may all be the better for that.'

'Then I spoke up. I swore that I was awfully in love with you.'

'You didn't.'

'I did;--that you were, out and away, the finest girl I ever saw in my life. Of course you understand that her two daughters were there. And that as for manners,--unless the rain could be attributed to American manners,--I did not think anything had gone wrong.'

'What about the smoking?'

'I told her they were all Englishmen, and that if she had been giving the party herself they would have smoked just as much. You must understand that she never does give parties.'

'How could you be so ill-natured?'

'There was ever so much more of it. And it ended by her telling me that I was a schoolboy. I found out the cause of it all. A great spout of rain had come upon her daughter's hat, and that had produced a most melancholy catastrophe.'

'I would have given her mine willingly.'

'An American hat;--to be worn by Lady Violet Clanfiddle!'

'It came from Paris last week, sir.'

'But must have been contaminated by American contact.'

'Now, Lord Silverbridge,' said she, getting up, 'if I had a stick I'd whip you.'

'It was such fun.'

'And you come here and tell it all to me.'

'Of course I do. It was a deal too good to keep to myself.

"American manners"!' As he said this he almost succeeded in looking like Lady Clanfiddle.

At that moment Mr Boncassen entered the room, and was immediately appealed to his by his daughter. 'Father, you must turn Lord Silverbridge out of the room.'

'Dear me! If I must,--of course I must. But why?'

'He is saying everything horrid he can about Americans.'

After this they settled down for a few minutes to general conversation, and then Lord Silverbridge again took his leave.

When he was gone Isabel Boncassen almost regretted that the 'something particular' which he had threatened to say had not been less comic in its nature.