Page 81 - 401_

80

nice friends. You know I never have more than eight, but on this
occasion I thought it would make things go better if I had twelve. I’d
been too busy to see Jane until the evening of the party. She kept us
all waiting a little — that was Gilbert’s cleverness — and at last she
sailed in. You could have knocked me down with a feather. She made
the rest of the women look dowdy and provincial. She made me feel
like a painted old trollop.”
Mrs. Tower drank a little champagne.
“I wish I could describe the frock to you. It would have been
quite impossible on anyone else, on her it was perfect. And the eye-
glass! I’d known her for thirty-five years and I’d never seen her
without spectacles.”
“But you knew she had a good figure.”
“How should I? I’d never seen her except in the clothes you
first saw her in. Did you think she had a good figure? She seemed not
to be unconscious of the sensation she made but to take it as a matter
of course. I thought of my dinner and I heaved a sigh of relief. Even
if she was a little heavy in hand, with that appearance it didn’t so very
much matter. She was sitting at the other end of the table and I heard
a good deal of laughter; I was glad to think that the other people were
playing up well; but after dinner I was a good deal taken aback when
no less than three men came up to me and told me that my sister-in-
law was priceless, and did I think she would allow them to call on
her. I didn’t quite know whether I was standing on my head or my
heels. Twenty-four hours later our hostess of to-night rang me up and
said she had heard my sister-in-law was in London and she was
priceless and would I ask her to luncheon to meet her? She has an
infallible instinct, that woman: in a month everyone was talking about
Jane. I am here to-night, not because I’ve known our hostess for
twenty years and have asked her to dinner a hundred times, but
because I’m Jane’s sister-in-law.”
Poor Mrs. Tower. The position was galling, and though I could
not help being amused, for the tables were turned on her with a
vengeance, I felt that she deserved my sympathy.
“People never can resist those who make them laugh,” I said,
trying to console her.
“She never makes me laugh.”
Once more from the top of the table I heard a guffaw and
guessed that Jane had said another amusing thing.