'I wish I could describe the frock to you.
It would have been quite impossible on anyone else; on her it was perfect.
And the eyeglass!
I'd known her for thirty-five years and I'd never seen her without spectacles.'
'But you knew she had a good figure.'
'How should I?
I'd never seen her except in the clothes you first saw her in.
Did you think she had a good figure?
She seemed not to be unconscious of the sensation she made but to take it as a matter of course.
I thought of my dinner and I heaved a sigh of relief.
Even if she was a little heavy in hand, with that appearance it didn't so very much matter.
She was sitting at the other end of the table and I heard a good deal of laughter, I was glad to think that the other people were playing up well; but after dinner I was a good deal taken aback when no less than three men came up to me and told me that my sister-in-law was priceless, and did I think she would allow them to call on her.
I didn't quite know whether I was standing on my head or my heels.
Twenty-four hours later our hostess of tonight rang me up and said she had heard my sister-in-law was in London and she was priceless and would I ask her to luncheon to meet her.
She has an infallible instinct, that woman: in a month everyone was talking about Jane.
I am here tonight, not because I've known our hostess for twenty years and have asked her to dinner a hundred times, but because I'm Jane's sister-in-law.'
Poor Mrs Tower.
The position was galling, and though I could not help being amused, for the tables were turned on her with a vengeance, I felt that she deserved my sympathy.
'People never can resist those who make them laugh,' I said, trying to console her.
'She never makes me laugh.'
Once more from the top of the table I heard a guffaw and guessed that Jane had said another amusing thing.
'Do you mean to say that you are the only person who doesn't think her funny?' I asked, smiling.
'Had it struck you that she was a humorist?'
'I'm bound to say it hadn't.'
'She says just the same things as she's said for the last thirty-five years.
I laugh when I see everyone else does because I don't want to seem a perfect fool, but I am not amused.'
'Like Queen Victoria,' I said.
It was a foolish jest and Mrs Tower was quite right sharply to tell me so.
I tried another tack.
'Is Gilbert here?' I asked, looking down the table.
'Gilbert was asked because she won't go out without him, but tonight he's at a dinner of the Architects' Institute or whatever it's called.'
'I'm dying to renew my aquaintance with her.'
'Go and talk to her after dinner.
She'll ask you to her Tuesdays.'
'Her Tuesdays?'
'She's at home every Tuesday evening.
You'll meet there everyone you ever heard of.
They're the best parties in London.
She's done in one year what I've failed to do in twenty.'
'But what you tell me is really miraculous.
How has it been done?'
Mrs Tower shrugged her handsome, but adipose shoulders.
'I shall be glad if you'll tell me,' she replied.
After dinner I tried to make my way to the sofa on which Jane was sitting, but I was intercepted and it was not till a little later that my hostess came up to me and said:
'I must introduce you to the star of my party.
Do you know Jane Napier?
She's priceless.
She's much more amusing than your comedies.'
I was taken up to the sofa.
The admiral who had been sitting beside her at dinner was with her still.