"Haven't you seen them?" Mrs. Hewston looked frightened. "Oh, my dear child, how very stupid of me. Why, why did I mention them? I supposed, of course, that you knew. But if you do not, please do not ask me anything more, for I never, never will be the bearer of bad news."
Dita stared at her in puzzled amazement for a moment and then she took her firmly by the shoulders. "Look here, Mrs. Hewston, you are frightening me dreadfully. I haven't an idea what you are talking about. Now you must tell me, indeed you must. Do you not see the state of mind in which you leave me unless you do?"
"Oh, my dear," Mrs. Hewston shook her handkerchief out of her bag, evidently preparing for its possible use. "I didn't mean to frighten you, and you shouldn't allow yourself to be so easily upset. Now, understand, no one was hurt, but those dreadful papers yesterday were full of a motor accident which occurred in California."
"Cresswell's car?" interrupted Dita quickly. "Was he--" She was about to say "injured," but Mrs. Hewston took the word from her mouth, or rather, substituted another for it.
"Alone? No, dear," shaking her head a little as at the regrettable, but to be expected frailties of men. "He was not alone. He was driving the car, it seems, with a beautiful young actress by his side. She must be a very--er--persuasive person, too, because the papers said that she is to appear here this spring in some superb production or other, and they strongly insinuated that Cress' money is behind the whole thing. But you see, that, as I said, there's nothing in it all, nothing really to worry over."
"I see," said Dita, but slowly and without enthusiasm.
"And now, my dear," Mrs. Hewston had suddenly grown quite brisk, "let's forget all this and talk of something that is more interesting to you, because it's in your line. Perdita," in her most wheedling and cooing tones, "I want you to make me lovely."
"Oh, in a middle-aged, broad, pink kind of way, but I want you to make me look slender and lissome and girlish without all this awful dieting and exercise and these dreadfully tight corsets that make one feel as if one were nothing more nor less than blanc-mange in a tin mold. And you know you do come out of them with your flesh all fluted, just like the blanc-mange when it's set."
