Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/327

Rh "On whom?"

"My wife."

He winked again. The lady was taken aback; but she recovered.

"Of course. I ought not to have forgotten that your Grace is married. So absurd of me. How is the dear Duchess?"

"Eh? Who? Oh, Polly! She's going it, I hear."

"Polly is—the dear Duchess?"

"Was Polly Perkins, the Pearl of the Peris, you know; used to be all the go at the halls. Her great song, you know, was 'He tallowed his nose with a candle.' Ever hear it? She could sing it! She sings it sometimes now, but she's got so jolly uppish that sometimes she will and sometimes she won't"

Mrs. Paynter looked slightly startled, as well she might be. The Duke of Staines was a young gentleman who was well calculated to startle her. Elderly ladies, respectable elderly ladies, read about such things in the papers, and delight in them. But as they never actually encounter the principal actors in the "scandals," they have not a favourable opportunity of judging what sort of characters those principal actors must really be. To Mrs. Paynter the Duke of Staines was the Duke of Staines—with an accent on "the." That a "Polly," whose "great song" was "He tallowed his nose with a candle," could be the Duchess of Staines—she couldn't realise the thing at all. However, she was a lady whose mental processes, under certain conditions, and in a certain sense, travelled quickly.

"And is the dear Duchess"—she was still "the dear Duchess"—"at Boulogne?"