Chapter XXV - Page 2

handsome--six foot two. And he has put by."

"Quite like Mr. Mudge, then!" that gentleman's friend rather desperately exclaimed.

"Oh not quite!" Mr. Drake's was ambiguous about it, but the name of Mr. Mudge had evidently given her some sort of stimulus. "He'll have more opportunity now, at any rate. He's going to Lady Bradeen."

"To Lady Bradeen?" This was bewilderment. "'Going--'?"

The girl had seen, from the way Mrs. Jordan looked at her, that the effect of the name had been to make her let something out. "Do you know her?"

She floundered, but she found her feet. "Well, you'll remember I've often told you that if you've grand clients I have them too."

"Yes," said Mrs. Jordan; "but the great difference is that you hate yours, whereas I really love mine. Do you know Lady Bradeen?" she pursued.

"Down to the ground! She's always in and out."

Mrs. Jordan's foolish eyes confessed, in fixing themselves on this sketch, to a degree of wonder and even of envy. But she bore up and, with a certain gaiety, "Do you hate her?" she demanded.

Her visitor's reply was prompt. "Dear no!--not nearly so much as some of them. She's too outrageously beautiful."

Mrs. Jordan continued to gaze. "Outrageously?"

"Well, yes; deliciously." What was really delicious was Mrs. Jordan's vagueness. "You don't know her--you've not seen her?" her guest lightly continued.

"No, but I've heard a great deal about her."

"So have I!" our young lady exclaimed.

Jordan looked an instant as if she suspected her good faith, or at least her seriousness. "You know some friend--?"

"Of Lady Bradeen's? Oh yes--I know one."

"Only one?"

The girl laughed out. "Only one--but he's so intimate."

Mrs. Jordan just hesitated. "He's a gentleman?"

"Yes, he's not a lady."

Her interlocutress appeared to muse. "She's immensely surrounded."

"She will be--with Mr. Drake!"

Mrs. Jordan's gaze became strangely fixed. "Is she very good- looking?"

"The handsomest person I know."

Mrs. Jordan continued to brood. "Well, I know some beauties." Then with her odd jerkiness: "Do you think she looks good?"

"Because that's not always the case with the good-looking?"--the other took it up. "No, indeed, it isn't: that's one thing Cocker's has taught me. Still, there are some people who have everything. Lady Bradeen, at any rate, has enough: eyes and a nose and a mouth, a complexion, a figure--"

"A figure?" Mrs. Jordan almost broke in.