“She threw up everything in the world for Arsenio Valdez; she still blushes like a school-girl when Arsenio backs Number 21. They’re lovers still, as you yourself said a little while ago. Well, then——! Besides—there’s Nina. Are you going to—desert?” “Nina?” He repeated the name half-absently; perhaps the larger share of his attention was occupied by the other part of my remarks. “Yes, Nina, of course!” But, as he dwelt on the thought of Lady Dundrannan (suddenly, as it seemed, recalled to his mind), his look of depression disappeared. He smiled in amusement—with an element of wonder in it; and he spoke as if he were surprising me with a wonderful discovery. “I say, Julius, Lucinda positively laughs at Nina, you know!” CHAPTER XVI PURPLE—AND FINE LINEN THAT Lucinda had once got the better of Nina had been the thing about her which most stirred Godfrey’s curiosity; that Lucinda now laughed at Nina evidently aroused in him an almost incredulous wonder. Perhaps it was calculated to surprise any one; to a Frost it must have seemed portentous; for Frosts, father, daughter, and nephew, judged by what you did and, consequently, had, not by what you were. Judged by their standards, Lucinda’s laughter was ridiculous, but in Godfrey’s fascinated eyes also sublime: such a sublime audacity as only a supremely attractive woman dare and can carry. The needlewoman, the _midinette_, the showcase girl, laughing at Lady Dundrannan! But there it was. I think that it shook to its foundations something that was very deeply set in Godfrey Frost. “Well, I suppose Lucinda knew that you were seeing her on the sly,” I suggested. He flushed a little. “I don’t particularly like that way of putting it. I’m not responsible to Nina for my actions.” I shrugged my shoulders. He lit another cigarette, and suddenly resumed his story. “Well, this is what happened. Arsenio didn’t come back; I suppose he won a bit, or kept his head above water somehow. I stayed in Nice, seeing a lot of Lucinda, for about another week. I used to go up to that hotel for lunch or tea, and put in the time somehow till she knocked off work. Then we had our walk; once or twice she dined with me, but she was rather difficult about that. She always kept just the same as she was at the beginning, except that, as I say, she liked to hear about Nina, and seemed a lot amused at what I told her—Nina’s sort of managing ways, and—and dignity, and so on. By the way, she asked about you too sometimes; what you’d been doing since she last heard from you, and so on. Apparently you used to write to her?” “Just occasionally—when I was on my travels. I hope she spoke kindly of me?”