If I had been going to the altar with Cheneston I couldn't have been more thrilled than I was when I entered Mrs. Cromer's room.
Cheneston rose. He was looking very white and bewildered; and suddenly the fact that he was nonplussed made me feel almost cruelly gay and confident.
"Pam!" Mrs. Cromer said. "Oh, boy! boy! isn't she the very sweetest thing that ever happened?"
"Surely," he said.
There was a round table laid for two, with a white linen tablecloth with a border of real lace eight inches wide, and in the centre stood a huge white and gold Venetian glass basket filled with lilies of the valley and maidenhair fern.
"I am going to have a little white love-feast all to myself for my two children," she said.
I caught my breath—somehow I had not quite expected just that.
For a dizzy moment I wondered what she would say and do if she knew the truth—that Cheneston and I had never been engaged and would never marry.
Everything we had was white, from the artichoke soup to the iced pudding. It was a wonderful meal, exquisitely served; it tasted like straw to me—and it would have fascinated an epicure. There was champagne, the only note of colour on the table; and Cheneston and I talked at high tension.
To me it had a peculiar and appealing joy; I could say to Cheneston some of the things I felt, and he accepted them as part of my rôle in the astonishing little farce; and from her bed the old lady watched us, an indescribably happy expression on her face.