“I’m giving a little dinner in the Grand Babylon restaurant,” said Eve, “and of course we must be there first.  Sissie’s arranged it for me on the ’phone.  It’ll be much more amusing than dining here, and it saves the servants.”  Yet the woman had recently begun to assert that the servants hadn’t enough to do!

“Ah!” said Mr. Prohack, startled.  “And who are the guests?”

“Oh!  Nobody!  Only us and Charlie, of course, and Oswald Morfey, and perhaps Lady Massulam.  I’ve told Charlie to do the ordering.”

“I should have thought one meal per diem at the Grand Babylon would have been sufficient.”

“But this is in the restaurant, don’t I tell you?  Oh, dear!  That’s three times I’ve tried to do my hair.  It’s always the same when I want it nice.  Now do get along, Arthur!”

“Strange!” said he with a sardonic blitheness.  “Strange how it’s always my fault when your hair goes wrong!” And to himself he said:  “All right!  All right!  I just shan’t inform you about that quarter of a million.  You’ve no leisure for details to-night, my girl.”

And he went into the boudoir.

His blissful serenity was too well established to be overthrown by anything short of a catastrophe.  Nevertheless it did quiver slightly under the shock of Eve’s new tactics in life.  This was the woman who, on only the previous night, had been inveighing against the ostentation of her son’s career at the Grand Babylon.  Now she seemed determined to rival him in showiness, to be the partner of his alleged vulgarity.  That the immature Sissie should suddenly drop the ideals of the new poor for the ideals of the new rich was excusable.  But Eve!  But that modest embodiment of shy and quiet commonsense!  She, who once had scorned the world of The Daily Picture, was more and more disclosing a desire for that world.  And where now were her doubts about the righteousness of Charlie’s glittering deeds?  And where was the ancient sagacity which surely should have prevented her from being deceived by the superficialities of an Oswald Morfey?  Was she blindly helping to prepare a disaster for her blind daughter?  Was the explanation that she had tasted of the fruit?  The horrid thought crossed Mr. Prohack’s mind:  All women are alike. He flung it out of his loyal mind, trying to substitute:  All women except Eve are alike.  But it came back in its original form....  Not that he cared, really.  If Eve had transformed herself into a Cleopatra his ridiculous passion for her would have suffered no modification.

Lying around the boudoir were various rectangular parcels, addressed in flowing calligraphy to himself:  the first harvest-loads of his busy morning.  The sight of them struck his conscience.  Was not he, too, following his wife on the path of the new rich?  No!  As ever he was blameless.  He was merely executing the prescription of his doctor, who had expounded the necessity of scientific idleness