"
"You may very easily be disappointed," her host warned her. "My
entertainments appeal more, as a rule, to men."
"Why don't you be thoroughly original and issue no invitations to
women at all?" Margaret enquired.
"For the same reason that you adorn your rooms and the dinner-table
with flowers," he answered. "One needs them--as a relief. Apart
from that, I am really proud of my dancing-room, and there again,
you see, your sex is necessary."
"We are flattered," Margaret declared, with a little bow. "It
does seem queer to think that you should own what Cynthia's
cousin, Davy Hinton, once told me was the best floor in London,
and that I have never danced on it."
"Nor I," Lady Cynthia put in. "There might have been some excuse
for not asking you, Margaret, but why an ultra-Bohemian like
myself has had to beg and plead for an invitation, I really
cannot imagine."
"You might find," Sir Timothy said, "you may even now--that some
of my men guests are not altogether to your liking."
"Quite content to take my risk," Lady Cynthia declared
cheerfully. "The man with the best manners I ever met--it was at
one of Maggie's studio dances, too--was a bookmaker. And a
retired prize-fighter brought me home once from an Albert Hall
dance."
"How did he behave?" Francis asked.
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