Beggar’s Choice

XVII

I danced with Cori

Cori

“What about A

Cori

“I don’t think you’ve got at all the right idea about your Uncle John.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I do not.”

“But we weren’t talking about my Uncle John-we were talking about his wife’s niece, A

She made a wicked face.

“She’s very handsome.”

“Handsome is as handsome does.”

All at once she looked very serious.

“What does she do, Cousin Car?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She looked across at Isobel, who was dancing with Heron.

“I love Isobel. Don’t you?”

I believe I blushed.

Cori

“I think your Isobel’s perfectly sweet.” She cocked her chin at me impudently, waited a minute, and said, “Why don’t you say, ‘She’s not my Isobel’? You don’t know your part a bit. That was your cue, and you didn’t take it.”

I laughed a little too.

“I’m not on in this play, really.”

“Isobel thinks you are,” she said.

I changed the subject.

“We’re not going to talk about Isobel-we’re going to talk about Bobby Markham.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to. Where did you meet him?”

“Cousin John had the Tarrants to lunch, and they brought him with them, so I said would they all come to my party to-night, and they said they would-only A

“No, she isn’t.”

“She said you were a great friend of hers.”

“I’m not.”

“I thought a gentleman never contradicted what a lady said.”

“Then I’m not a gentleman. I don’t like lies and I always contradict them?”

“Aren’t you fierce!” said Cori

“Are you writing to him?”

“Of course I am. I write to him by every mail. Wouldn’t you like to know what I’m going to say about you?”

“Not if it’s very bad. I’m a sensitive plant, and if you wrote harshly about me-I should just fade out.”

“ ’M-” said Cori

Our dance was just coming to an end, when she exclaimed and pulled me out of the stream.

“I’ve got a note for you, and I’m forgetting all about it!”

I felt very much surprised, because I couldn’t think who could have given her a note. She took it out of a little silver bag and gave it to me. I felt more puzzled than ever. There was a small square envelope with a typed address, “Carthew Fairfax, Esq.,” and that was all.

“Who is it from?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“But who gave it you?”

“A waiter put it down on the table in front of me.”

“A waiter?”

She nodded.

“Open it-that’s the way to know who it’s from.”

The music had stopped, and there were a lot of people passing us. I stood back to get out of their way and tore open the envelope.

There was a plain sheet of paper inside, or rather, part of a sheet of paper, for the top of it had been torn off, leaving the docked sheet almost square. Across this square was typed:

Accept any invitation extended to you. You are to go about and make friends. Look up old acquaintances and make new ones. Funds by first post to-morrow.

Z.10

I stared at the paper. It was thick and expensive. The bit that had been torn away would have had an embossed address on it and a telephone number-I’d have given something to see them. I put the note away in my pocket, and found Cori

“Well?” she said.

“I’m not any the wiser.”

“Really?”

“Really. Would you know the waiter who gave you the note?”

“No, I shouldn’t-I never saw him.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s perfectly intriguing,” said Cori

Of course it’s the easiest thing in the world to tip a waiter and tell him to let a girl have a note without seeing who gives it to her. I just wondered who had tipped the waiter. And as I was wondering, Cori

“Well, I’ll tell any one she’s handsome,” said Cori

A

Cori

She came up to Cori

“I’ve come after all,” she said. “Uncle John was so distressed at my missing your party. He begged me to take the car and run up-and as he really was going straight to bed after his di

When Cori

She said, “Car! What a surprise!”

I said, “Is it?” and Cori

“Is it?” said A

I was dancing the next with Fay, and I said so; but as I said it, she came up behind us and told me quite coolly that she was cutting my dance. After that there didn’t seem to be any way out of dancing with A

“I don’t want to dance-I want to talk to you. Let’s go and sit out somewhere. Up in the gallery’s a good place if it’s not too crowded.”

First of all I hoped it would be crowded, and then I decided that it might be just as well to have a good straight talk with A

The gallery runs across one side of the room, and at either end of it there are palms in pots, and a couple of chairs which are pretty well screened from view. She made a beeline for the nearest pair of chairs, and it just went through my mind that she seemed to know all about the place. And then I saw something that gave me the most furious amount to think about. A