Lily smiled. “Stay over, and I’ll get the Duchess to dine with them.”
“I shan’t stay over–the Gormers have paid for my salon-lit,” said Mrs. Fisher with simplicity. “But get the Duchess to dine with them all the same.”
Lily’s smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend’s importunity was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. “I’m sorry I have been negligent about the Brys–-” she began.
“Oh, as to the Brys–it’s you I’m thinking of,” said Mrs. Fisher abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered voice: “You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess chucked us. It was Louisa’s idea–I told her what I thought of it.”
Miss Bart assented. “Yes–I caught sight of you on the way back, at the station.”
“Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George Dorset–that horrid little Dabham who does ‘Society Notes from the Riviera’–had been dining with us at Nice. And he’s telling everybody that you and Dorset came back alone after midnight.”
“Alone–? When he was with us?” Lily laughed, but her laugh faded into gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher’s look. “We DID come back alone–if that’s so very dreadful! But whose fault was it? The Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown Princess; Bertha got bored with the show, and went off early, promising to meet us at the station. We turned up on time, but she didn’t–she didn’t turn up at all!”
Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents, with careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher received it in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have lost sight of her friend’s part in the incident: her inward vision had taken another slant.
“Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?”
“Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for the fete. At any rate, I know she’s safe on the yacht, though I haven’t yet seen her; but you see it was not my fault,” Lily summed up.
“Not your fault that Bertha didn’t turn up? My poor child, if only you don’t have to pay for it!” Mrs. Fisher rose–she had seen Mrs. Bry surging back in her direction. “There’s Louisa, and I must be off–oh, we’re on the best of terms externally; we’re lunching together; but at heart it’s ME she’s lunching on,” she explained; and with a last hand-clasp and a last look, she added: “Remember, I leave her to you; she’s hovering now, ready to take you in.
“Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher’s leave-taking away with her from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving, the first step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry’s good graces. An affable advance–a vague murmur that they must see more of each other–an allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include the Duchess as well as the Sabrina–how easily it was all done, if one possessed the knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as she had so often wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not more consistently exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful–and sometimes, could it be that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she had been vaguely conscious of a reason for sinking her pride, had in fact even sunk it to the point of suggesting to Lord Hubert Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps, that he might really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if she undertook to have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his help, with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much more for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before her as she advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted. Had it been produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with Selden? She thought not–time and change seemed so completely to have relegated him to his proper distance. The sudden and exquisite reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the recent past so far back that even Selden, as part of it, retained a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so clear that they were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down to Nice for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer. No–that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.