But ask him for
your capital, my dear, and watch his face when you do it. Compared to
his wife he's a model, even if it's a model of all the vices."
Mary missed Dodo. Diablette had been an invincible and dangerous enemy
to the blue frog from the Mentone china shop, poor, blase Hilda, who
spent most of her time choking in flies a size too large for her, or
trying helplessly to push them down her blue throat with a tiny
turquoise hand. Dodo, however, had been a ray of brightness in the
house: meretricious, garish brightness perhaps; still she had given a
tinselline sparkle to the dull rooms when things were at their worst,
and Lady Dauntrey clouded with sullen gloom.
When the newest and humblest guests of the Villa Bella Vista lost money
beyond a certain limit, the bare thought of the Casino gave them mental
indigestion. They then stayed safely at home, and infested the unaired
drawing-room--pale people reading pink papers, and talking "system"; or
flushed people playing bridge for small points, with the windows
hermetically closed and their backs to the sunset. They quarrelled among
themselves in a liverish way over cards and politics, and agreed only on
the subject of such titled acquaintances as they had in common, all of
whom seemed to be perfectly charming. But these heraldic conversations
bored Mary even more intensely than the squabbles. There came a time
when desperation got the upper hand of that prudence so earnestly
recommended by Lord Dauntrey.
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