“You do take sugar in it, don’t you, Tots?” plaintively from Cicely, with a side-effect of, “She’s so deplorably altered in everything else, I don’t know what any of her tastes may be now!”
“Does Mr. Waters take it?” (To me!)
“Not any, thanks,” from the Governor. “Only milk.”
Cicely’s glance commented silently, “Ah! Incompatibility latent here! An unhappy marriage!”
Why, why hadn’t I said I’d like to go to Rumpelmayer’s, or Lyons’—or Lockhart’s? Anything rather than this funereal feast, with Sydney Vandeleur as the skeleton thereat! Even if he’d remained a voiceless skeleton! But, cheered by all the subtle encouragement and moral support from his pretty hostess—I must say Cicely was looking prettier than ever!—Sydney began to recover a little, relaxed his first pose of open broken-heartedness, and proceeded to talk.
Nobody else did. Mr. Waters looked as if nothing was going to force his lips asunder again. I didn’t want to say anything. Cicely was quite happy to listen. And Sydney held forth.
He began with—“Have you been to—” and “Haven’t you seen—” various picture-galleries and pieces of an “advanced” type.
“What! Not seen ‘The Keening of Deidre,’ even? But why not?” he protested to me, lolling back in that chair as if he didn’t possess a spine. “Oh, it’s such a wonderful thing; so subtle and so brutal at the same time. And one’s sure of seeing everyone one wants to see, in the pit; a positive At Home of them. Better than the dear old palmy days of the Sicilians. I have been three times. The whole effect is so—so sculptured! You would love it! Oh, you must take her”—this to my official fiancé, who sat silent and non-committal and very bolt-upright. “You really must not miss it. It is coming off next week.”
“I’m going away next week,” said I.
“Oh, yes? To the country?”