The astounded table learnt that Miss Fancy was illustrious in the press of the United States as having been engaged to be married more often than any other actress.  Yet she had never got as far as the altar, though once she had reached the church-door—­only to be swept away from it by a cyclone which unhappily finished off the bridegroom. (What grey and tedious existences Eve and Sissie had led!) Her penultimate engagement had been to the late Silas Angmering.

“Something told me I should never be his wife,” she said vivaciously.  “You know the feeling we women have.  And I wasn’t much surprised to hear of his death.  I’d refused Silas eight times; then in the end I promised to marry him by a certain date.  He wouldn’t take No, poor dear!  Well, he was a gentleman anyway.  Of course it was no more than right that he should put me down in his will, but not every man would have done.  In fact it never happened to me before.  Wasn’t it strange I should have that feeling about never being his wife?”

She glanced eagerly at Mr. Prohack and Mr. Prohack’s women, and there was a pause, in which Mr. Softly Bishop said, affectionately regarding his nose: 

“Well, my dear, you’ll be my wife, you’ll find,” and he uttered this observation in a sharp tone of conviction that made a quite disturbing impression on the whole company, and not least on Mr. Prohack, who kept asking himself more and more insistently: 

“Why is Softly Bishop marrying Miss Fancy, and why is Miss Fancy marrying Softly Bishop?”

Mr. Prohack was interrupted in his private enquiry into this enigma by a very unconventional nudge from Sissie, who silently directed his attention to Eve, who seemingly wanted it.

“Your friend seems anxious to speak to you,” murmured Eve, in a low, rather roguish voice.

‘His friend’ was Lady Massulam, who was just concluding a solitary lunch at a near table; he had not noticed her, being still sadly remiss in the business of existing fully in a fashionable restaurant.  Lady Massulam’s eyes confirmed Eve’s statement.

“I’m sure Miss Fancy will excuse you for a moment,” said Eve.

“Oh!  Please!” implored Miss Fancy, grandly.

Mr. Prohack self-consciously carried his lankness and his big head across to Lady Massulam’s table.  She looked up at him with a composed but romantic smile.  That is to say that Mr. Prohack deemed it romantic; and he leaned over the table and over Lady Massulam in a manner romantic to match.

“I’m just going off,” said she.

Simple words, from a portly and mature lady—­yet for Mr. Prohack they were charged with all sorts of delicious secondary significances.

“What is the difference between her and Eve?” he asked himself, and then replied to the question in a flash of inspiration:  “I am romantic to her, and I am not romantic to Eve.”  He liked this ingenious explanation.