"Any minute, I might," said he.
They all talked sympathetically to George on the new subject.
After lunch, Lois disappeared. She came back resplendent for the races, when coffee had long been finished in the drawing-room.
"Why aren't you ready, Laure?" she demanded.
"I'm not going, darling."
"Lois," Mr. Ingram exhorted, "don't forget the afternoon is to be spent in literary composition."
"It isn't," Laurencine contradicted. "I may as well tell you I've written all I mean to write in the way of letters for one day. But I don't want to go, really, Lois darling."
"No. She wants to think," Mrs. Ingram explained.
Lois set her lips together, and then glimpsed herself in the large mirror over the anthracite stove. She looked too rich and complicated for that simple drawing-room.
A performance on a horn made itself heard in the street below.