“I’ll take pity on you,” said Ronnie. “There is quite a clever youth whom I intended for you from the beginning. He’s coming in later, when the rest have gone.”
When she and Ronnie were alone again and before Lucian Hope, the young painter, arrived, Sylvia, looking through one of his sketch-books, came across a series of studies of a girl in the practice-dress of dancing; he told her it was Jenny Pearl.
“Maurice Avery’s Jenny,” she murmured. “What happened to her?”
“Didn’t you hear about it? She was killed by her husband. It was a horrible business. Maurice went down to see her where she lived in the country, and this brute shot her. It was last summer. The papers were full of it.”
“And what happened to Maurice?”
“Oh, he nearly went off his head. He’s wandering about in Morocco probably.”
“Where I met him,” said Sylvia.
“But didn’t he tell you?”
“Oh, it was before. More than three years ago. We talked about her.”
Sylvia shuddered. One of her improvisations had been Maurice Avery; she must burn it.