When the ladies had left the table and the coffee had been brought in,
and the men's cigars were lit, Austin said:
"What a magnificently beautiful creature she has grown into."
"Whom do you mean?" asked Dick.
"Why, Viviette, of course. She's the most fascinating thing I've come
across for years."
"Do you think so?" said Dick shortly.
"Don't you?"
Dick shrugged his shoulders. Austin laughed.
"What a stolid old beggar you are. To you, she's just the same little
girl that used to run about here in short frocks. If she were a horse
you'd have a catalogue yards long of her points."
"But as she's a lady," said Dick, tugging his moustache, "I don't care
to catalogue them."
Austin laughed again. "Fairly scored!" He raised his cup to his lips,
took a sip, and set it down again.
"Why on earth," said he with some petulance, "can't mother give us
decent coffee?"
CHAPTER II
THE CONSPIRATORS
Dick went heavy-hearted to bed that night, pronouncing himself to be the
most abjectly miserable of God's creatures, and calling on Providence to
remove him speedily from an unsympathetic world.
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