"A woman once told me," the Colonel began again.
Here I saw Elizabeth prick up her ears even more, if possible!
The Colonel saw it too. The smile he gave might have been the smile of some coquette who, deliberately "playing" her lover, sees him "rise." Ah, if Elizabeth looked like that Princess who on her bridal-night was metamorphosed into a lad, this slim Colonel might have been the bridegroom who, to keep her love, was bewitched in turn into becoming a Princess....
He went on:
"Yes, a woman who's taught me rather a lot about women once told me that the most delightful lunch of her life was—er—was in a poisonous little musty coffee-room of a country pub."
Here Captain Holiday put in: "What induced you to take her there?"
A gleam of mischief behind the Colonel's lashes, but no reply to this.
"It was stuffy with the smell of bygone chops," he enlarged dreamily. "It was hung with huge dark oil-paintings of spaniels, and horses, and wild duck and things, and there were umpteen hulking sauceboats on each sideboard; all very plated and dirty——"
"How fascinating," snapped Elizabeth.
"The table decorations," pursued Colonel Fielding, "were five napkins arranged as mitres and a tall 'fluted ruby' glass vase full of dead daffodils——"