Write it down on your cuff for me, will you, Colonel Cummins? I _shall_
be so sick if I forget it."
Stephen was perhaps the only person in the box quite oblivious of Lady
Dolly. He looked steadily over her animated shoulders at the play,
wholly involved in an effort which the author would doubtless have
resented, to keep its current and direction through the floating debris
of constrained sayings with which it was encumbered, to know in advance
whither it was carrying its Mrs. Halliday, and how far Lord Ingleton
would accompany. When Lord Ingleton paused, as it were, to beg four
people to "have nothing to do with sentiment--it so often leads to
conviction," and the house murmured its amusement, Arnold shifted his
shoulders impatiently. "How inconsistent," Lord Ingleton reproached Mrs.
Halliday a moment later, "to wear gloves on your hands and let your
thoughts go candid." Arnold turned to Duff. "There's no excuse for
that," he said, but Lindsay was hanging upon Hilda's rejoinder and did
not hear him.
At the end of the first act, where, after introducing Mrs. Halliday to
her husband's divorced first wife, Lord Ingleton is left rubbing his
hands with gratification at having made two such clever women "aware of
each other," Stephen found himself absolutely unwilling to discuss the
piece with the rest of the party.
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