‘Yes, if possible. I think her message means that. Why else should she want to see me, or take the house for August and September? It’s a bribe, a hint, a signal.’
The interview between the two ladies was extremely satisfactory, as is usually the case when there is no nonsense about the conversationalists, and each of them is willing and even eager to give exactly what the other wants. The business of the house was very soon relegated to a firm of solicitors, and the godmotherly aspect began to show through the form of the landlady, as in some cunning transformation scene, faintly at first but with increasing distinctness.
‘Your first visit to London?’ asked Madge Newgate.
‘Yes: I’ve been here but a week, and have done nothing but hunt round for a house and go to the opera.’
Instantly Lady Newgate remembered the solitary and dazzling figure in the box. She, too, had wondered who the woman in orange and diamonds was. Mrs. Whitehand’s face had made no impression whatever on her.
‘Ah, then I am sure I saw you there,’ she said. ‘We were all wondering who you were. You must allow me to put some of my friends out of their suspense by letting them know.’
‘I should be very pleased for your friends not to strain themselves,’ she remarked. ‘And I’m in suspense too, as to who your friends are. I don’t know a soul in London.’
This was rather a relief to Madge Newgate. Sometimes a perfectly impossible tail was attached to these strange Americans, and you had to encounter the riff-raff of the Western world _en masse_. She laid her hand on the other’s knee.
‘My dear, you must get some friends at once,’ she said. ‘You might dine with us to-night, will you? I have two or three people coming.’
This was quite sufficient. Mrs. Whitehand spoke shortly and to the point.
Madge Newgate was a perfectly honest woman, and now that all ambiguity had been cleared away, she explained what she could do and what she would expect to receive. She could give Mrs. Whitehand the opportunity of meeting practically any one she wished, and she could repeat and again repeat that opportunity. She could bring people to Mrs. Whitehand’s house, and within limits get them to invite her to theirs. But more than that, she frankly admitted she could not do.