"Beast!" muttered Jack Neligage to Fairfield. "I should like to cram a fistful of his twisted-up sentences down his snaky throat!"
"He must open his throat with a corkscrew in the morning," was the reply.
Miss Wentstile was smiling her most gracious.
"How do you feel to-day, Count?" she asked. "Does our spring weather affect you unpleasantly?"
The Count made a splendid gesture with both his hands, waving in the right the monocle which he more often carried than wore.
"Oh, what ees eet de weder een one land w'ere de peoples so heavenly keent ees?" he demanded oratorically. "Only eet ees Mees Endeecott do keel me wid her so great cheelleeness."
Miss Endicott looked up from her seat at the tea-table beside which the group stood. Her air was certainly sufficiently cold to excuse the Count for feeling her chilliness; and she answered without a glimmer of a smile.
"I'm not cruel," she said. "I wouldn't hurt a worm."
"But," the Count responded, shaking his head archly, "eet ees dat I be not a worm."
"I thought that all men were worms of the dust," Mrs. Harbinger observed.
The Count bowed his tall figure with finished grace.
"And all de weemens," he declared, "aire angles!"
"It is our sharpness, then, that is to be admired," Alice commented.
"Of course, Alice," Miss Wentstile corrected vixenishly, "the Count means angels."
"So many men," Alice went on without showing other sign of feeling than a slight flush, "have turned a woman from an angel into an angle."
"It is no matter, Count," put in the hostess. "She is only teasing you, and being rude into the bargain. You will take tea? Alice, pour the Count some tea."
"Loomps? Loomps? Oh, eet weel be sugaire een de tea. Tree, eef you weel be so goot weedeen eet."
Just as the Count, with profuse expressions of overwhelming gratitude to have been permitted so great an honor, had received his tea from the hand of Miss Endicott, and Miss Wentstile was clearing her throat with the evident intention of directing toward him some profound observation, Mrs. Neligage came briskly forward with outstretched hand.
"It would be generous of you, Count," she said, "to recognize an old friend."
He stared at her with evident astonishment.
"_Ciel!_" he exclaimed. "Ah, but eet weel be de _belle_ Madame Neleegaze!"