I "And where is your charming daughter?" asked Mr. Softly Bishop¹ so gently of Eve, when he had greeted her, and quite incidentally Mr. Prohack, in the entrance hall of the Grand Babylon Hotel. He was alone—no sign of Miss Fancy.
 
"Sissie?" said Eve calmly. "I haven't the slightest idea."
 
"But I included her in my invitations—and Mr. Morfey too."
 
Mr. Prohack was taken aback, foreseeing the most troublesome complications; and he glanced at Eve as if for guidance and support. He was nearly ready to wish that after all Sissie had not gone and got married secretly and prematurely². Eve, however, seemed quite undisturbed, though she offered him neither guidance nor support.
 
"Surely," said Mr. Prohack hesitatingly, "surely you didn't mention Sissie in your letter to me!"
 
"Naturally I didn't, my dear fellow," answered Mr. Bishop. "I wrote to her separately, knowing the position taken up by the modern young lady. And she telephoned me yesterday afternoon that she and Morfey would be delighted to come."
 
"Then if you know so much about the modern young lady," said Eve, with bright and perfect self-possession, "you wouldn't expect my daughter to arrive with her parents, would you?"
 
Mr. Softly Bishop laughed.
 
"You're only putting off the evil moment," said Mr. Prohack in the silence of his mind to Eve, and similarly he said to Mr. Softly Bishop:
 
"I do wish you wouldn't call me 'my dear fellow.' True, I come to your lunch, but I'm not your dear fellow and I never will be."
 
"I invited your son also, Prohack," continued Mr. Bishop. "Together with Miss Winstock or Warburton—she appears to have two names—to make a pair, to make a pair you understand. But unfortunately he's been suddenly called out of town on the most urgent business." As he uttered these last words Mr. Bishop glanced in a peculiar³ manner partly at his nose and partly at Mr. Prohack; it was a singular feat⁴ of glancing, and Mr. Prohack uncomfortably wondered what it meant, for Charles lay continually on Mr. Prohack's chest, and at the slightest provocation⁵ Charles would lie more heavily than usual.
 
"Am I right in assuming that the necklace affair is satisfactorily settled?" Mr. Softly Bishop enquired⁷, his spectacles gleaming and blinking at the adornment⁸ of Eve's neck.
 
"You are," said Eve. "But it wouldn't be advisable for you to be too curious about details."
 
Her aplomb⁹, her sangfroid¹⁰, astounded¹¹ Mr. Prohack—and relieved him. With an admirable ease she went on to congratulate their host upon his engagement, covering him with petals¹² of flattery and good wishes. Mr. Prohack could scarcely recognise his wife, and he was not sure that he liked her new worldiness quite as much as her old ingenuous¹³ and sometimes inarticulate simplicity¹⁴. At any rate she was a changed woman. He steadied himself, however, by a pertinent¹⁵ reflection: she was always a changed woman.
 
Then Sissie and Ozzie appeared, looking as though they had been married for years. Mr. Prohack's heart began to beat. Ignoring Mr. Softly Bishop, Sissie embraced her mother with prim¹⁶ affectionateness, and Eve surveyed her daughter with affectionate solicitude¹⁷. Mr. Prohack felt that he would never know what had passed between these two on the previous day, for they were a pair of sphinxes when they chose, and he was too proud to encourage confidences from Ozzie. Whatever it might have been it was now evidently buried deep, and the common life, after a terrible pause, had resumed.
 
"How do you do, Miss Prohack," said Mr. Softly Bishop, greeting. "So glad you could come."
 
Mr. Prohack suspected that his cheeks were turning pale, and was ashamed of himself. Even Sissie, for all her young, hard confidence, wavered.
 
But Eve stepped in.
 
"Don't you know, Mr. Bishop?—No, of course you don't. We ought to have told you. My daughter is now Mrs. Morfey. You see in our family we all have such a horror of the conventional wedding and reception and formal honeymoon¹⁸ and so on, that we decided¹⁹ the marriage should be strictly²⁰ private, with no announcements of any kind. I really think you are the first to know. One thing I've always liked about actresses is that in the afternoon you can read of them getting married that day and then go and see them play the same evening. It seems to me so sensible. And as we were all of the same opinion at our house, especially Sissie and her father, there was no difficulty."
 
"Upon my word," said Mr. Softly Bishop shaking hands with Ozzie. "I believe I shall follow your example."
 
Mr. Prohack sank into a chair.
 
"I feel rather faint," he said. "Bishop, do you think we might have a cocktail²² or so?"
 
"My dear fellow, how thoughtless of me! Of course! Waiter! Waiter!" As Mr. Bishop swung round in the direction of waiters Eve turned in alarm to Mr. Prohack. Mr. Prohack with much deliberation winked²³ at her, and she drew back. "Yes," he murmured. "You'll be the death of me one day, and then you'll be sorry."
 
"I don't think a cocktail is at all a good thing for you, dad," Sissie calmly observed.
 
The arrival of Miss Fancy provided a distraction²⁵ more agreeable than Mr. Prohack thought possible; he positively²⁶ welcomed the slim, angular blonde, for she put an end to a situation which, prolonged another moment, would have resulted in a severe general constraint²⁷.
 
"You're late, my dear," said Mr. Softly Bishop, firmly.
 
The girl's steely blue-eyed glance shot out at the greeting, but seemed to drop off flatly from Mr. Bishop's adamantine spectacles like a bullet from Bessemer armour²⁸.
 
"Am I?" she replied uncertainly, in her semi-American accent. "Where's the ladies' cloakroom of this place?"
 
"I'll show you," said Mr. Bishop, with no compromise.
 
The encounter was of the smallest, but it made Mr. Prohack suspect that perhaps Mr. Bishop was not after all going into the great warfare²⁹ of matrimony blindly or without munitions³⁰.
 
"I've taken the opportunity to tell Miss Fancy that she will be the only unmarried woman at my lunch," said Mr. Bishop amusingly, when he returned from piloting his beloved. A neat fellow, beyond question!
 
Miss Fancy had apparently³¹ to re-dress herself, judging from the length of her absence. The cocktails³², however, beguiled³³ the suspense³⁴.
 
"Is this for me?" she asked, picking up a full glass when she came back.
 
"No, my dear," said Mr. Bishop. "It isn't. We will go in to lunch." And they went in to lunch, leaving unconsumed the cocktail which the abstemious³⁵ and spartan³⁶ Sissie had declined to drink.
 
 
 
II
 
 
"I suppose you've been to see the Twelve and Thirteen," said Eve, in her new grand, gracious manner to Miss Fancy, when the party was seated at a round, richly-flowered table specially²¹ reserved by Mr. Softly Bishop on the Embankment front of the restaurant, and the hors d'oeuvre had begun to circulate on the white cloth, which was as crowded as the gold room.
 
"I'm afraid I haven't," muttered Miss Fancy weakly but with due refinement³⁷. The expression of fear was the right expression. Eve had put the generally brazen³⁸ woman in a fright at the first effort. And the worst was that Miss Fancy did not even know what the Twelve and Thirteen was—or were. At the opening of her début at what she imagined to be the great, yet exclusive, fashionable world, Miss Fancy was failing. Of what use to be perfectly³⁹ dressed and jewelled, to speak with a sometimes carefully-corrected accent, to sit at the best table in the London restaurant most famous in the United States, to be affianced to the cleverest fellow she had ever struck, if the wonderful and famous hostess, Mrs. Prohack, whose desirable presence was due only to Softly's powerful influence in high circles, could floor her at the very outset of the conversation? It is a fact that Miss Fancy would have given the emerald ring off her left first-finger to be able to answer back. All Miss Fancy could do was to smite⁴¹ Mr. Softly Bishop with a homicidal glance for that he had not in advance put her wise about something called the Twelve and Thirteen. It is also a fact that Miss Fancy would have perished sooner than say to Mrs. Prohack the simple words: "I haven't the slightest idea what the Twelve and Thirteen are." Eve did not disguise her impression that Miss Fancy's lapse⁴² was very strange and disturbing.
 
"I suppose you've seen the new version of the 'Sacre du Printemps,' Miss Fancy," said Mrs. Oswald Morfey, that exceedingly modern and self-possessed young married lady.
 
"Not yet," said Miss Fancy, and foolishly added: "We were thinking of going to-night."
 
"There won't be any more performances this season," said Ozzie, that prince of authorities on the universe of entertainment.
 
And in this way the affair continued between the four, while Mr. Softly Bishop, abandoning his beloved to her fate, chatted murmuringly with Mr. Prohack about the Oil Market, as to which of course Mr. Prohack was the prince of authorities. Mrs. Prohack and her daughter and son-in-law ranged at ease over all the arts without exception, save the one art—that of musical comedy—in which Miss Fancy was versed⁴³. Mr. Prohack was amazed at the skilled cruelty of his women. He wanted to say to Miss Fancy: "Don't you believe it! My wife is only a rather nice ordinary housekeeping sort of little woman, and as for my daughter, she cooks her husband's meals—and jolly badly, I bet." He ought to have been pleased at the discomfiture⁴⁴ of Miss Fancy, whom he detested⁴⁵ and despised; but he was not; he yearned⁴⁶ to succour her; he even began to like her.
 
And not Eve and Sissie alone amazed him. Oswald amazed him. Oswald had changed. His black silk stock had gone the way of his ribboned eye-glass; his hair was arranged differently; he closely resembled an average plain man,—he, the unique Ozzie! With all his faults, he had previously⁴⁷ been both good-natured and negligent⁴⁸, but his expression was now one of sternness and of resolute⁴⁹ endeavour. Sissie had already metamorphosed him. Even now he was obediently following her lead and her mood. Mr. Prohack's women had evidently determined⁵⁰ to revenge themselves for being asked to meet Miss Fancy at lunch, and Ozzie had been set on to assist them. Further, Mr. Prohack noticed that Sissie was eyeing her mother's necklace with a reprehending⁵¹ stare. The next instant he found himself the target of the same stare. The girl was accusing him of folly⁵², while questioning Ozzie's definition of the difference between Georgian and neo-Georgian verse. The girl had apparently become the censor⁵³ of society at large.
 
Mysterious cross-currents ran over the table in all directions. Mr. Prohack looked around the noisy restaurant packed with tables, and wondered whether cross-currents were running invisibly over all the tables, and what was the secret force of fashionable fleeting⁵⁴ convention which enabled women with brains far inferior to his own to use it effectively for the fighting of sanguinary battles.
 
At last, when Miss Fancy had been beaten into silence and the other three were carrying on a brilliant high-browed conversation over the corpse⁵⁵ of her up-to-dateness, Mr. Prohack's nerves reached the point at which he could tolerate the tragic⁵⁶ spectacle no more, and he burst out vulgarly, in a man-in-the-street vein⁵⁷, chopping off the brilliant conversation as with a chopper:
 
"Now, Miss Fancy, tell us something about yourself."
 
The common-sounding phrase seemed to be a magic formula endowed with the power to break an awful spell. Miss Fancy gathered herself together, forgot that she had been defeated, and inaugurated a new battle. She began to tell the table not something, but almost everything, about herself, and it soon became apparent that she was no ordinary woman. She had never had a set-back; in innumerable conversational⁵⁸ duels⁵⁹ she had always given the neat and deadly retort, and she had never been worsted, save by base combinations deliberately⁶⁰ engineered against her—generally by women, whom as a sex she despised even more than men. Her sincere belief that no biographical detail concerning Miss Fancy was too small to be uninteresting to the public amounted to a religious creed⁶¹; and her memory for details was miraculous⁶². She recalled the exact total of the takings at any given performance in which she was prominent in any city of the United States, and she could also give long extracts from the favourable⁶³ criticisms of countless⁶⁴ important American newspapers,—by a singular coincidence only unimportant newspapers had ever mingled⁶⁵ blame with their praise of her achievements. She regarded herself with detachment as a remarkable⁶⁶ phenomenon, and therefore she could impersonally⁶⁷ describe her career without any of the ordinary restraints—just as a shopman might clothe or unclothe a model in his window. Thus she could display her heart and its history quite unreservedly,—did they not belong to the public?
 
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 cyclone⁶⁸ 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 vivaciously⁶⁹. "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 insistently⁷⁰:
 
"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 enigma⁷¹ 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 solitary⁷² lunch at a near table; he had not noticed her, being still sadly remiss⁷³ in the business of existing fully⁴⁰ 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!" implored⁷⁴ Miss Fancy, grandly.
 
Mr. Prohack self-consciously carried his lankness⁷⁵ 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.
 
"I wanted to tell you," said she gravely, with beautiful melancholy⁷⁶, "Charles is flambé. He is done in. I cannot help him. He will not let me; but if I see him to-night when he returns to town I shall send him to you. He is very young, very difficult, but I shall insist that he goes to you."
 
"How kind you are!" said Mr. Prohack, touched.
 
Lady Massulam rose, shook hands, seemed to blush, and departed. An interview as brief as it had been strange! Mr. Prohack was thrilled, not at all by the announcement of Charlie's danger, perhaps humiliation⁷⁷, but by the attitude of Lady Massulam. He had his plans for Charlie. He had no plans affecting Lady Massulam.
 
Mr. Softly Bishop's luncheon⁷⁸ had developed during the short absence of Mr. Prohack. It's splendour, great from the first, had increased; if tables ever do groan⁷⁹, which is perhaps doubtful, the table was certainly groaning⁸⁰; Mr. Softly Bishop was just dismissing, with bland⁸¹ and negligent approval, the major domo of the restaurant, with whom, like all truly important personages, he appeared to be on intimate terms. But the chief development of the luncheon disclosed itself in the conversation. Mr. Softly Bishop had now taken charge of the talk and was expatiating⁸² to a hushed and crushed audience his plans for a starring world-tour for his future wife, who listened to them with genuine admiration⁸³ on her violet-tinted face.
 
"Eliza won't be in it with me when I come back," she exclaimed suddenly, with deep conviction, with anticipatory⁸⁴ bliss⁸⁵, with a kind of rancorous ferocity.
 
Mr. Prohack understood. Miss Fancy was uncompromisingly jealous of her half-sister's renown⁸⁶. To outdo that renown was the main object of her life, and Mr. Softly Bishop's claim on her lay in the fact that he had shown her how to accomplish her end and was taking charge of the arrangements. Mr. Softly Bishop was her trainer and her manager; he had dazzled her by the variety and ingenuity⁸⁷ of his resourceful schemes; and his power over her was based on a continual implied menace that if she did not strictly obey all his behests she would fail to realise her supreme⁸⁸ desire.
 
And when Mr. Softly Bishop gradually drew Ozzie into a technical tête-à-tête, Mr. Prohack understood further why Ozzie had been invited to the feast. Upon certain branches of Mr. Bishop's theatrical⁸⁹ schemes Ozzie was an acknowledged expert, and Mr. Bishop was obtaining, for the price of a luncheon, the fruity knowledge and wisdom acquired by Ozzie during long years of close attention to business.
 
For Mr. Prohack it was an enthralling⁹⁰ scene. The luncheon closed gorgeously upon the finest cigars and cigarettes, the finest coffee, and the finest liqueurs that the unique establishment could provide. Sissie refused every allurement⁹¹ except coffee, and Miss Fancy was permitted nothing but coffee.
 
"Do not forget your throat, my dear," Mr. Softly Bishop authoritatively⁹² interjected into Miss Fancy's circumstantial recital⁹³ of the expensiveness of the bouquets⁹⁴ which had been hurled⁹⁵ at her in the New National Theatre at Washington.
 
"And by the way," (looking at his watch), "do not forget the appointment with the elocutionist."
 
"But aren't you coming with me?" demanded Miss Fancy alarmed. Already she was learning the habit of helplessness—so attractive to men and so useful to them.
 
These remarks broke up the luncheon party, which all the guests assured the deprecating host had been perfectly delightful⁹⁶, with the implied addition that it had also constituted the crown and summit of their careers. Eve and Sissie were prodigious⁹⁷ in superlatives to such an extent that Mr. Prohack began to fear for Mr. Softly Bishop's capacity to assimilate the cruder forms of flattery. His fear, however, was unnecessary. When the host and his beloved departed Miss Fancy was still recounting tit-bits of her biography.
 
"But I'll tell you the rest another time," she cried from the moving car.
 
She had emphatically won the second battle. From the first blow she had never even looked like losing. And she had shown no mercy, quite properly following the maxim⁹⁸ that war is war. Eve and Sissie seemed to rise with difficulty to their knees, after the ruthless adversary⁹⁹, tired of standing¹⁰⁰ on their prostrate¹⁰¹ form, had scornfully walked away.
 
 
III
 
 
"Well!" sighed Mrs. Prohack, with the maximum of expressiveness¹⁰², glancing at her daughter as one woman of the world at another. They were lingering, as it were convalescent after the severe attack and defeat, in the foyer of the hotel.
 
"Well!" sighed Sissie, flattered by the glance, and firmly taking her place in the fabric¹⁰³ of society. "Well, father, we always knew you had some queer friends, but really these were the limit! And the extravagance of the thing! That luncheon must have cost at least twenty pounds,—and I do believe he had special flowers, too. When I think of the waste of money and time that goes on daily in places like these, I wonder there's any England left. It ought to be stopped by law."
 
"My child," said Mr. Prohack. "I observe with approbation¹⁰⁴ that you are beginning to sit up and take notice. Centuries already divide you from the innocent creature who used to devote her days and nights to the teaching of dancing to persons who had no conception of the seriousness of life. I agree with your general criticism, but let us remember that all this wickedness does not date from the day before yesterday. It's been flourishing for some thousands of years, and all prophecies about it being over-taken by Nemesis¹⁰⁵ have proved false. Still, I'm glad you've turned over a new leaf."
 
Sissie discreetly¹⁰⁶ but unmistakably tossed her young head.
 
"Oswald, dearest," said she. "It's time you were off."
 
"It is," Ozzie agreed, and off he went, to resume the serious struggle for existence,—he who until quite recently had followed the great theatrical convention that though space may be a reality, time is not.
 
"I don't mind the extravagance, because after all it's good for trade," said Eve. "What I—"
 
"Mother darling!" Sissie protested. "Where do you get these extraordinary ideas from about luxury being good for trade? Surely you ought to know—"
 
"I daresay I ought to know all sorts of things I don't know," said Eve with dignity. "But there's one thing I do know, and that is that the style of those two dreadful people was absolutely the worst I've ever met. The way that woman gabbled—and all about herself; and what an accent, and the way she held her fork!"
 
"Lady," said Mr. Prohack. "Don't be angry because she beat you."
 
"Beat me!"
 
"Yes. Beat you. Both of you. You talked her to a standstill at first; but you couldn't keep it up. Then she began and she talked you to a standstill, and she could keep it up. She left you for all practical purposes dead on the field, my tigresses. And I'm very sorry for her," he added.
 
"Dad," said Sissie sternly. "Why do you always try to be so clever with us? You know as well as we do that she's a creature, and that there's nothing to be said for her at all."
 
"Nothing to be said for her!" Mr. Prohack smiled tolerantly. "Why she was the star of the universe for Silas Angmering, the founder¹⁰⁷ of our fortunes. She was the finest woman he'd ever met. And Angmering was a clever fellow, let me tell you. You call her a creature. Yes, the creature of destiny, like all of us, except of course you. I beg to inform you that Miss Fancy went out of this hotel a victim, an unconscious victim, but a victim. She is going to be exploited. Mr. Softly Bishop, my co-heir, will run her for all she is worth. He will make a lot of money out of her. He will make her work as she has never worked before. He will put a value on all her talents, for his own ends. And he will deprive her of most of her accustomed pleasures. In fifteen years there'll be nothing left of Miss Fancy except an exhausted¹⁰⁸ wreck¹⁰⁹ with a spurious reputation, but Mr. Softly Bishop will still be in his prime and in the full enjoyment¹¹⁰ of life, and he will spend on himself the riches that she has made for him and allow her about sixpence a week; and the most tragic and terrible thing of all is that she will think she owes everything to him! No! If I was capable of weeping, I should have wept at the pathos¹¹¹ of the spectacle of Miss Fancy as she left us just now unconscious of her fate and revelling¹¹² in the most absurd illusions. That poor defenceless woman, who has had the misfortune not to please you, is heading straight for a life-long martyrdom." Mr. Prohack ceased impressively.
 
"And serve her right!" said Eve. "I've met cats in my time, but—" And Eve also ceased.
 
"And I am not sure," added Mr. Prohack, still impressively. "And I am not sure that the ingenuous and excellent Oswald Morfey is not heading straight in the same direction." And he gazed at his adored daughter, who exhibited a faint flush, and then laughed lightly. "Yes," said Mr. Prohack, "you are very smart, my girl. If you had shown violence you would have made a sad mistake. That you should laugh with such a brilliant imitation of naturalness gives me hopes of you. Let us seek Carthew and the car. Mr. Bishop's luncheon, though I admit it was exceedingly painful, has, I trust, not been without its useful lessons to us, and I do not regret it. For myself I admit it has taught me that even the finest and most agreeable women, such as those with whom I have been careful to sourround myself in my domestic existence, are monsters of cruelty. Not that I care."
 
"I've arranged with mamma that you shall come to dinner to-night," said Sissie. "No formality, please."
 
"Mayn't your mother wear her pearls?" asked Mr. Prohack.
 
"I hope you noticed, Arthur," said Eve with triumphant¹¹³ satisfaction, "how your Miss Fancy was careful to keep off the subject of jewels."
 
"Mother's pearls," said Sissie primly¹¹⁴, "are mother's affair."
 
Mr. Prohack did not feel at all happy.
 
"A............