“I’d simply love it. I’ve always wanted to see Princess Evelyn. They say she’s perfectly lovely.”
“All right. I’ll arrange about it then.”
A short silence ensued. Loree’s mind was busily engaged in turning over her evening gowns, putting them on and discarding them one after the other, all except one she had never yet worn—delicious thing, pale and sweet as primroses growing in a field that the Lord had blessed. She gave a sigh of pleasure at the thought of wearing it. Valeria in the meantime gazed wearily around the room as though she hated everything in it, and in the world. Suddenly her gaze fell upon Pat Temple’s photograph.
“Ah! So that’s the husband!” said she, and took it up to scrutinise closely. “One of those big, sanguine men, born under Jupiter.”
“What does that imply?” asked Loree.
“Luck in most things, especially in his own disposition.”
“Yes; Pat has a lovely disposition,” agreed his wife carelessly. “He is so awfully good-tempered. I have never known him cross with any one.”
“They’re the worst when roused,” commented Mrs Cork.
Loree was already bored with the subject. She put up a hand and passed it delicately over her eyes, sighing as if in pain. Valeria Cork recognised a hint when it was handed to her—even on a silver salver. The moment she had gone, Loree hopped out of bed and locked the door. Then she closed the balcony shutters and set both electric fans going.
It was one of those torrid days when clothes seem an outrage. She did not feel inclined to dress. Instead, she took from a trunk a roll of filmy powder-blue ninon bought for making blouses. In the dim room filled with fragrance and the rustling breezes of the fans, she swathed herself as with some soft blue mist, and her body glimmered through it like a living statue. Delicious hours she spent then, alone with her roses and diamonds, and the reflection of herself in the mirror, silent and lovely, less like a woman than some figure from the Elgin marbles come to life. But when the maid brought dinner, she was back in bed, white and languid and very still beneath her quilt.