"I am not gouty, mother," Lady Pearl said, in her morose voice. "I am only melancholy. And that"—she addressed herself to the tweed suit—"is because I cannot, I will not, blind myself to the actual condition of the world I see around me." "Oh, my dear," said the Duchess, "Carlsbad would cure you. But," she added to the tweed suit, "unfortunately, I can't afford to send her there just at present." The Lady Pearl grew large with vexation, as people of sensitive nature will when, having elaborately surrounded themselves with an interesting atmosphere, they find it ruthlessly dissipated by a Philistine allusion to uric acid. She seemed about to make some almost apoplectic rejoinder when Mr. Rodney mellifluously chipped in. "I believe in the climate of Florida gout is practically[Pg 50] unknown," he said, speaking obliquely towards the tweed suit. "My friend, Lord Bernard Roche"—he paused, expectant of some eager exclamation from the person whom Lord Bernard in his letters called "poor old Huskinson." But none came. "Lord Bernard Roche, now in New York—City"—he again paused, and once more in vain—"tells me so." [Pg 50] His conclusion was a trifle flurried. When we don't get what we want, in conversation, we are apt to be put to confusion. Mr. Rodney looked very hard indeed at the tweed suit, and then, although not introduced, added to it: "I think you know Lord Bernard? He tells me so in his very charming and entertaining letters." "Oh yes—Lord Bernard—oh yes, certainly," exclaimed the tweed suit, with a sudden flaring vivacity. "A very sympathetic nature," Mr. Rodney continued, in softest music. "I am sure that you have found it so. A man to go to confidently in any trouble." "Oh, certainly. Most undoubtedly yes." The Duchess had caught Mr. Rodney's gracious innuendo, and she now chimed in, with her most basso-profondo manner: "Ah, Mr. Van Adam! but in London you must forget all your troubles. London is the most cheerful place imaginable." "Oh, mother!" "Yes, Pearl, it is for a healthy person. No doubt," to the tweed, "you are staying for the season?"
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