Paris. I would have Lanvin do over the costumes, though I admit you did very well under the circumstances. After this, I beg you not to dance with Ranna. You are not suited to each other."
"You're right about that," she agreed.
"Ah!" exclaimed Figente. "Good, good. I'm delighted you have discovered that. What is Ranna up to these days?"
"Running around with Mrs. Custerd and Horta."
"Yes, that would follow. Of course, Hal and the other boys in the quartet are perfect for you. I must see, as soon as I am up, about all of us getting to Paris."
Vida watched Lucy anxiously. Lucy had been so depressed the past week, especially since that awful Horta party, that she had purposely refrained from speaking of anything unpleasant. But when they got home she must tell her Figente was very ill and not to count on him. Denis had said Mrs. Perry, Figente's sister, wanted him to come to Newport for the summer but he wouldn't go because Hal was nagging him about Paris.
"Denis says you're to take this at three," she said, handing him a pill.
"You and Denis are tiresome," he complained, swallowing.
"You act like a spoiled child," Vida flared.
"I know," he chuckled, "but I have to have some compensatory pleasures. Annoying you is one."
"All I want to do is to finish your damned library," she said tartly. Sick or not she wanted to be free of him.
"Oh that will take years, so you may as well make up your mind to put up with me," he said blithely and strained his fat hulk toward Lucy.
"Tell me," he asked, "what's this latest chitchat about you and Nino?"
"What chitchat?" she hedged.
"I'm not completely incommunicado. I heard you walked out of a party in a huff. I never expected you to be so childish."
"Don't you dare talk to Lucy like that," Vida said furiously, "your Horta Cornwallis is nothing but a Madam!"
Figente chuckled. "She's not my Horta Cornwallis—but otherwise, Boswell, you are quite accurate, I imagine; though I myself never would have epitomized her quite so baldly. She is a picaresque character who amuses me as she probably would have amused Brantôme or Rabelais. She is an entertaining survival of a more robust age which unhypocritically had essential uses for panderers
