III

It was several weeks later that Mrs. Clinch once more brought the plebeian aroma of heated tram-cars and muddy street-crossings into the violet-scented atmosphere of her cousin’s drawing-room.

“Well,” she said, tossing a damp bundle of proof into the corner of a silk-cushioned bergere, “I’ve read it at last and I’m not so awfully shocked!”

Mrs. Fetherel, who sat near the fire with her head propped on a languid hand, looked up without speaking.

“Mercy, Paula,” said her visitor, “you’re ill.”

Mrs. Fetherel shook her head.  “I was never better,” she said, mournfully.

“Then may I help myself to tea?  Thanks.”

Mrs. Clinch carefully removed her mended glove before taking a buttered tea-cake; then she glanced again at her cousin.

“It’s not what I said just now—?” she ventured.

“Just now?”

“About ‘Fast and Loose’?  I came to talk it over.”

Mrs. Fetherel sprang to her feet.  “I never,” she cried dramatically, “want to hear it mentioned again!”

“Paula!” exclaimed Mrs. Clinch, setting down her cup.

Mrs. Fetherel slowly turned on her an eye brimming with the incommunicable; then, dropping into her seat again, she added, with a tragic laugh, “There’s nothing left to say.”

“Nothing—?” faltered Mrs. Clinch, longing for another tea-cake, but feeling the inappropriateness of the impulse in an atmosphere so charged with the portentous.  “Do you mean that everything has been said?” She looked tentatively at her cousin.  “Haven’t they been nice?”

“They’ve been odious—­odious—­” Mrs. Fetherel burst out, with an ineffectual clutch at her handkerchief.  “It’s been perfectly intolerable!”

Mrs. Clinch, philosophically resigning herself to the propriety of taking no more tea, crossed over to her cousin and laid a sympathizing hand on that lady’s agitated shoulder.

“It is a bore at first,” she conceded; “but you’ll be surprised to see how soon one gets used to it.”

“I shall—­never—­get—­used to it—­” Mrs. Fetherel brokenly declared.

“Have they been so very nasty—­all of them?”

“Every one of them!” the novelist sobbed.

“I’m so sorry, dear; it does hurt, I know—­but hadn’t you rather expected it?”

“Expected it?” cried Mrs. Fetherel, sitting up.

Mrs. Clinch felt her way warily.  “I only mean, dear, that I fancied from what you said before the book came out—­that you rather expected—­that you’d rather discounted—­”

“Their recommending it to everybody as a perfectly harmless story?”

“Good gracious!  Is that what they’ve done?”

Mrs. Fetherel speechlessly nodded.

“Every one of them?”

“Every one—­”

“Whew!” said Mrs. Clinch, with an incipient whistle.