A grisly little fiction concerning her lovers is Lady Tippins’s point. She is always attended by a lover or two, and she keeps a little list of her lovers, and she is always booking a new lover, or striking out an old lover, or putting a lover in her black list, or promoting a lover to her blue list, or adding up her lovers, or otherwise posting her book. Mrs. Veneering is charmed by the humour, and so is Veneering. Perhaps it is enhanced by a certain yellow play in Lady Tippins’s throat, like the legs of scratching poultry.
“I banish the false wretch from this moment, and I strike him out of my Cupidon (my name for my Ledger, my dear,) this very night. But I am resolved to have the account of the Man from Somewhere, and I beg you to elicit it for me, my love,” to Mrs. Veneering, “as I have lost my own influence. Oh, you perjured man!” This to Mortimer, with a rattle of her fan.
“We are all very much interested in the Man from Somewhere,” Veneering observes.
Then the four Buffers, taking heart of grace all four at once, say:
“Deeply interested!”
“Quite excited!”
“Dramatic!”
“Man from Nowhere, perhaps!”
And then Mrs. Veneering—for the Lady Tippins’s winning wiles are contagious—folds her hands in the manner of a supplicating child, turns to her left neighbour, and says, “Tease! Pay! Man from Tumwhere!” At which the four Buffers, again mysteriously moved all four at once, explain, “You can’t resist!”