"
I knew his lordship. He has the gift of sleeping quite informally when
his attention is not too closely engaged. I suggested that the host
set his musical phonograph in motion on some one of the more audible
selections. As I heard no more from him that night I dare say my plan
worked.
Our town, as may be imagined, buzzed with transcendent gossip on the
morrow. The _Recorder_ disclosed at last that the Belknap-Jacksons
of Boston and Red Gap were quietly entertaining his lordship, the
Earl of Brinstead, though since the evening before this had been news
to hardly any one. Nor need it be said that a viciously fermenting
element in the gossip concerned the apparently cordial meeting of his
lordship with the Klondike person, an encounter that had been watched
with jealous eyes by more than one matron of the North Side set. It
was even intimated that if his lordship had come to put the creature
in her place he had chosen a curious way to set about it.
Also there were hard words uttered of the Belknap-Jacksons by Mrs.
Effie, and severe blame put upon myself because his lordship had not
come out to the Flouds'.
"But the Brinsteads have always stopped with us before," she went
about saying, as if there had been a quite long succession of them.
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