He tried to touch me, but I passed. Then he had a go
at the best man, but the best man had nothing in the world but one
suit of clothes and a spare collar. Claire was broke, too, so the
end of it was that the best man had to sneak out and pawn my watch
and the wedding-ring.'
The room rang with her reminiscent laughter, Bill supplying a bass
accompaniment. Bill was delighted. He had never hoped that it
would be granted to him to become so rapidly intimate with
Claire's hostess. Why, he had only to keep the conversation in
this chummy vein for a little while longer and she would give him
the run of the house.
'Miss Fenwick isn't in now, I suppose?' he asked.
'No, Claire's out with Dudley Pickering. You don't know him, do
you?'
'No.'
'She's engaged to him.'
It is an ironical fact that Lady Wetherby was by nature one of the
firmest believers in existence in the policy of breaking things
gently to people. She had a big, soft heart, and she hated hurting
her fellows. As a rule, when she had bad news to impart to any one
she administered the blow so gradually and with such mystery as to
the actual facts that the victim, having passed through the
various stages of imagined horrors, was genuinely relieved, when
she actually came to the point, to find that all that had happened
was that he had lost all his money.
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