"Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming."

"Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'm awfully
sorry."

Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and masculine.
Everything about her was manly. She had a large, square, middle-aged
face, with a massive projecting nose and little greenish eyes, the whole
surmounted by a lofty and elaborate coiffure of a curiously improbable
shade of orange. Looking at her, Denis always thought of Wilkie Bard as
the cantatrice.

"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra, Sing in
op-pop-pop-pop-pop-popera."

Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and a row
of pearls. The costume, so richly dowagerish, so suggestive of the Royal
Family, made her look more than ever like something on the Halls.

"What have you been doing all this time?" she asked.

"Well," said Denis, and he hesitated, almost voluptuously. He had a
tremendously amusing account of London and its doings all ripe and ready
in his mind. It would be a pleasure to give it utterance. "To begin
with," he said...

But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbush's question had been what the
grammarians call rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a little
conversational flourish, a gambit in the polite game.

"You find me busy at my horoscopes," she said, without even being aware
that she had interrupted him.

A little pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more receptive
ears. He contented himself, by way of revenge, with saying "Oh?" rather
icily.

"Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the Grand National this year?"

"Yes," he replied, still frigid and mono-syllabic. She must have told
him at least six times.

"Wonderful, isn't it? Everything is in the Stars. In the Old Days,
before I had the Stars to help me, I used to lose thousands. Now"--she
paused an instant--"well, look at that four hundred on the Grand
National. That's the Stars."

Denis would have liked to hear more about the Old Days. But he was too
discreet and, still more, too shy to ask. There had been something of
a bust up; that was all he knew. Old Priscilla--not so old then, of
course, and sprightlier--had lost a great deal of money, dropped it
in handfuls and hatfuls on every race-course in the country. She had
gambled too. The number of thousands varied in the different legends,
but all put it high. Henry Wimbush was forced to sell some of his
Primitives--a Tadd