“Ugh! the brute!” Miss Graham snarled. The others looked blank.
One cold titter broke the silence. It emerged from Palametta’s thin lips. Everyone looked at her. They knew that titter of Palametta’s.
“Why—of course,” said Palametta as if she had discerned what should have been obvious to every one. “Why—of—course.” She drawled it.
“Of course what?” Rosamond, the sometimes blunt, demanded.
“I’ve been noticing your gown and wondering why you won’t tell us anything really about Mr. Falcon,” she twittered archly, darting her head from side to side; but there was rather more of the snake than of the bird in her, as she did it.
“Miss Watts, what on earth do you mean?”
“Why, yes!” a MacMillan shrilled. “She’s in colours!”
“Mrs. Mearely’s in colours,” the Pelham-Hew septet sounded the tocsin.
Rosamond’s face blazed.
“There’s no change in my dress,” she asserted violently, “except that there are no black ribbons. I’ve often worn white—with flowers—in the evening. Why, the colour of this dress is”—she caught Palametta’s glittering gaze, then a Pelham-Hew’s appraising eye, and, realizing that this feline bevy was not composed of the colour-blind, finished weakly—“well—it’s a sort of lavender.”