"Do you think an artistic career a good thing for a woman?" he asked, with a slight touch of satire in his voice as he put the question.
Gigue glanced up at him quickly and comprehendingly.
"Ah, bah! Pour une femme il n'y'a qu'une chose--l'Amour!" he replied--"Mais--au meme temps--l'Art c'est mieux qu'un mariage de convenance!"
Roxmouth shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject.
That same evening, when everyone had retired to bed, and when Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay was carefully taking off her artistically woven 'real hair' eyebrows and putting them by in a box for the night, Lady Beaulyon, arrayed in a marvellous 'deshabille' of lace and pale blue satin, which would have been called by the up-to-date modiste 'a dream of cerulean sweetness,' came into her room with dejection visibly written on her photographically valuable features.
"It's all over, Pipkin!" she said, with a sigh,--Pipkin was the poetic pet-name by which the 'beauty' of the press-paragraphist addressed her Ever-Youthful friend,--"We shall never get a penny out of Mrs. Fred Vancourt. Maryllia is a mule! She has told me as plainly as politeness will allow her to do that she does not intend to know either you or me any more after we have left here--and you know we're off to-morrow. So to-morrow ends the acquaintance. That girl's 'cheek' is beyond words! One would think she was an empress, instead of being a little bounder with only an old Manor-house and certainly not more than two thousand a year in her own right!"
'Pipkin' stared. That she was destitute of eyebrows, save for a few iron-grey bristles where eyebrows should have been, and that her beautiful Titian hair was lying dishevelled on her dressing table, were facts entirely lost sight of in the stupefaction of the moment.
"Maryllia Vancourt does not intend to know US!" she ejaculated,-- "Nonsense, Eva! The girl must be mad!"
"Mad or sane, that's what she says,"--and Eva Beaulyon turned away from the spectacle of her semi-bald and eyebrow-less confidante with a species of sudden irritation and repulsion--"She declares we are in the pay of her aunt and Lord Roxmouth. So we are, more or less! And what does it matter! Money must be had--and whatever way there is of getting it should be taken. I laughed at her, and told her quite frankly that I would do anything for money,--flatter a millionaire one day and cut him the next, if I could get cheques for doing both. How in the world should I get on without money?--or you either! But she is an incorrigible little idiot--talks about honour and principle exactly like some mediaeval story-book. She declares she will never speak to either of us again after we've gone away to- morrow. Of course we can easily reverse the position and turn the tables upon her by saying we will not speak to her again. That will be easy enough--for I believe she's after the parson."