It is hardly necessary to say that Dorothy did not confide in the girls at the theater what had happened at home, but she let it be generally understood that she was now looking out for rooms, and she talked a good deal of where one could and where one could not live in a flat. About a week later Olive Fanshawe took her aside and asked if she was serious about moving into a flat at last; and, upon Dorothy's assuring her that she was, Olive divulged under the seal of great secrecy that a friend of hers, a man of high rank with much power and influence in the country, was anxious to do something for her.
"He's a strange man," she told Dorothy, "and though I know you'll think it's impossible for anybody to want to look after a girl in a flat without other things in return, he really doesn't make love to me at all. He gets tired of society and political dinners and the Palace."
"Buckingham Palace. You didn't think I meant the Crystal Palace?" said Olive, with a laugh.
Dorothy, with Debrett for a footstool, when she chose to treat the volume thus, was offended by this raillery, and explained that she had only wished to know whether she meant St. James's Palace or Buckingham Palace.
"Darling, I was only teasing you.... Well, my friend wants to have a place where he can lunch quietly sometimes or have tea and forget about the cares of grandeur. You won't mind if I don't tell you his name, will you?"
Dorothy did mind extremely, but inasmuch as she had affected an air of mystery about herself and her origin, she felt she could not reasonably object to Olive's secrecy.
"He told me to find another girl to live with me," Olive continued, "and he said he would pay the rent of the flat and find all that's necessary in the way of decorations and furniture. I've been waiting such a long time for the right girl; I thought you didn't want to live up in town or I should have suggested it sooner. He's seen you from the front, and he admired you very much and couldn't understand why I didn't ask you at once."
Dorothy was struck by Olive's frankness and still more was she struck by her incapacity for jealousy. She could not think of any other girl who would have been so obviously pleased as Olive was to hear a friend admired by their own man. Three months at the Vanity had made Dorothy chary of believing the assertion that there was nothing more between her and the mysterious great one than good-fellowship, because she was quite sure by now that all men expected more, and her judgment of Olive's character led her to suppose that Olive would be too kind to refuse him more. However, that was her business, and since there was evidently going to be a simulation of complete innocence about the transaction, no offer could have suited her better.