"Sure I let him. It was a ride. When he asked me to dinner at the Blitz I let him do that, too. You saw us. Don’t you remember that nut? that’s what you called him afterward."
It came to me, that sleek mass of silver, distinguished and sinister at once.
"What else would I call him when he wants me to? But that’s giving him away."
Vio had come out of her room without our having heard her. In a tea-gown of black and gold she stood before us in an almost terrifying dignity.
That is, it was almost terrifying to me, though Lydia was equal to the situation.
"Oh, madam, I didn’t know you heard. Mr. Harrowby was just kidding me about Colonel Stroud."
"Indeed!" Moving forward with the air of an astonished queen, Vio seated herself in the armchair. "But why should Mr. Harrowby be—what was the word?—kidding you about anything?"
"Oh, we’re old friends. Ain’t we?" She turned to me for corroboration.
"Very good old friends," I said, with some warmth.
"Madam never asked me. She never asked me if I knew Colonel Stroud, either. How could I tell that she wanted to know?"
"Oh, but I don’t want to know. I’m only interested—" she looked toward me—"that you and—and this young lady should be so—so intimate."
"Let me see," Vio began to calculate. "It’s about four or five weeks since Mrs. Mountney sent you to me."
"And Mrs. Averill had sent me to her. You see, madam, I get a commission on every pair, and so—"
Vio’s brows came together in a frown. "To ... what? I don’t understand you."
"You see, madam, it’s this way. I’ve only taken this corset job to—to get an insight. I’m not really a saleswoman at all. I’m an adventuress."
It was the only moment at which I ever saw Vio nonplussed.
"Oh, you are!" was all she could find to say.
"Well, not exactly yet; but I’m going to be. Only, if you’re an adventuress you’ve got to be a swell adventuress. There’s only one kind, and it’s that. But you see, madam, I’ve never had enough to do with ladies to be the real thing; and so when Clotilde put me on to this corset stunt, I thought it ’d give me a chance to study them."
"Yes, madam. An adventuress has got to be that much of a lady that she can put it over on a duchess or she might just as well stay out of the business. Any boob in the movie line would tell you that."