Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/21

BROKEN WINGS Lady Claude earnestly followed. "His present position?"

"Yes—everything that was to come to him; his steady rise in value."

"Has it been so great?"

"Surely—his situation and name. Don't you know his lovely work and what's thought of it?"

"Oh yes, I know. That's why" But Lady Claude stopped. After which: "But if he's still keeping himself?"

"Oh, it's not for me," said Mrs. Harvey.

"And evidently not for me. Whom then," her visitor asked, "does he think good enough?"

"Oh, these great people!" Mrs. Harvey smiled.

"But we're great people—you and I!" And Lady Claude kissed her good night.

"You mustn't, all the same," the elder woman said, "betray the secret of my greatness, which I've told you, please remember, only in the deepest confidence."

Her tone had a quiet purity of bitterness that for a moment longer held her friend, after which Lady Claude had the happy inspiration of meeting it with graceful gaiety. "It's quite for the best, I'm sure, that Mr. Straith wouldn't have you. You've kept yourself too; you'll marry yet—an ambassador!" And with another good night she reached the door. "You say you don't get on, but you do."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Harvey with vague attenuation.

"Oh yes, you do," Lady Claude insisted, while the door emphasised it with a little clap that sounded through the still house.

 III

first night of The New Girl occurred, as everyone remembers, three years ago, and the play is running yet, a fact that may render strange the failure to be 9