Horace Campbell is perhaps the priest of this little nest of asps, and without doubt the priestess is the amazing Mrs. Dealtry, now flaming in the sunset of her witty discontented life. She is tall and corpulent, with wonderful vitality and quantities of auburn hair and carmine lip salve, and mauve scarves, and when she and Horace Campbell get together, as they do two or three times a day, to discuss their friends, those who die, so to speak, and are dismissed by them, are the lucky ones, for the rest they drive with whips through the London streets, without a rag of reputation to cover them. She, like Horace, has plenty of humour, and if the sight of a wrinkled old woman with a painted face, and one high-heeled foot in the grave, dealing out horrible innuendoes like a pack of cards, does not make you feel sick, you will enjoy her conversation very much. Years ago she started the theory that Horace was devotedly attached to her, and for her sake committed celibacy, and though she has changed her friends more often than she changes her dress, she still sticks to the gratifying belief that she has wrecked his life.
‘Horace might have done anything,’ she is accustomed to say, ‘but he would always waste his time on me. Poor Horace! such a dear, isn’t he, but how much aged in this last year or two. And I can’t think why somebody doesn’t tell him to have his teeth attended to.’
Then as Horace entered the room she made a place for him on the sofa.
‘Monster, come here at once,’ she said. ‘Now what is the truth about Lady Genge’s sudden disappearance? I am told he simply turned her out of the house, which any decent man would have done years ago.’
‘He did,’ said Horace, ‘and she always came in again by the back door. This time he has turned her out of the back door. On dit que “Cherchez le valet.”’
Mrs. Dealtry gave a little scream of laughter.
‘Last time it was the girl’s music master,’ she said. ‘She will never take servants with a character.’
‘Character for what?’ asked Horace. ‘Sobriety?’
‘She was at the opera three nights ago, but blind drunk, though you mustn’t repeat that. I’m told she had her tiara upside down with the points over her forehead. Alice Chignonette, as I call her, was with her, a small horse-hair bun glued with seccotine to the back of her head. She hadn’t got any clothes on, but was slightly distempered.’