'What a pity!' she said, gently.
'Yes, it's a pity,' he admitted. 'But look here. That's the worst of me. When I get talking about myself I'm likely to become a bore.'
Offering him the cigarette cabinet she breathed the old, effective, sincere answer: 'Not at all, it's very interesting.'
'Let me see, this house belongs to you, doesn't it?' he said in a different casual tone as he lighted a cigarette.
Shortly afterwards he departed. John had not returned from Dain's, but Twemlow said that he could not possibly stay, as he had an appointment at Hanbridge. He shook hands with restrained ardour. Her last words to him were: 'I'm so sorry my husband isn't back,' and even these ordinary words struck him as a beautiful phrase. Alone in the drawing-room, she sighed happily and examined herself in the large glass over the mantelpiece. The shaded lights left her loveliness unimpaired; and yet, as she gazed at the mirror, the worm gnawing at the root of her happiness was not her husband's precarious situation, nor his deviousness, nor even his mere existence, but the one thought: 'Oh! That I were young again!'
'Mother, whatever do you think?' cried Millicent, running in eagerly in advance of Ethel at ten o'clock. 'Lucy Turner's sister died to-day, and so she can't sing in the opera, and I am to have her part if I can learn it in three weeks.'
'What is her part?' Leonora asked, as though waking up.
'Why, mother, you know! Patience, of course! Isn't it splendid?'
'Where are father and Mr. Twemlow? Ethel inquired, falling into a chair.