Was this said in bitterest irony? Poppy wondered dully, and she did not know what she answered before she left the room, and that did not matter, for Clem Portal did not hear. They were two people walking in heavy darkness that cut them off from the voices of their fellows.
Half an hour later the house rang with the laughter and merriment of the two new arrivals—old friends of the Portals—who had come down from Maritzburg to spend a few days and attend the Durban Club Ball, which was to take place the next night. In the drawing-room, before dinner was announced, Clem's laughter was the gayest of all; but to Poppy's ear there was a note in it like the clank of a broken bell. The Maritzburgers were two light-hearted, pretty women of the military set, whose husbands' regiments had so recently come from India that they were still keenly and sorely feeling the difference between Simla and the benighted capital of Natal. But their repinings were for the time forgotten in vivacious crowing over the fact that their husbands had been unable to accompany them at the last moment, so that there would now be nothing to prevent them from having a delightful fling and dancing their heels off at the coming ball.
"Robbie is all very well up to supper-time," cried Mrs. Dorand to the world at large, "but after supper he gets sleepy, and I meet his sulky face at every corner imploring me to come home."
"Everybody knows how foolish Theodore is about my adoration for your Billy, Clem." The wife of Major Monk was a violet-eyed, jolly girl from the Curragh. "But now I shall be able to dance with him uninterruptedly all night."
"Indeed then you won't," said Clem, "for he's been called away on business quite suddenly, and I doubt if he'll be back in time for the ball—so we shall be a hen party."
Amidst moans and expostulations she added: "But I daresay I can beat up a few wild-geese from somewhere. There are several coming to-night." She proceeded to recount the names and accomplishments of the men expected, and during the tale the rest of the party arrived and dinner was announced.
Poppy found herself upon the arm of Luce Abinger.
There were moments during the course of that dinner when she believed herself to be on the point of going mad; when the lights and the jewels and the wine and the faces were all hideously mixed, and she could have shrieked like a banshee at the two merry Maritzburg women, and fled from the table and the house. But always she was recalled to herself by just glancing to the head of the table where Clem Portal sat, the wittiest and most charming of hostesses, with two badly-painted streaks of red in her cheeks, and flaming lips which gradually lost their colouring and looked oddly at variance with the rest of the "make up" by the end of the dinner. Even bad dreams come to an end some time.
If there were two things in Poppy's world impossible to associate with peace and gratitude, they were assuredly the darkness of a garden and the exclusive society of Luce Abinger. Yet she found herself during a part of that nightmare-evening looking upon these things as blessings for which to be distinctly thankful to Heaven.
Two other people were sauntering afar, and in the drawing-room a quartette had settled down to Bridge, with Miss Allendner at the piano playing the stilted polonaises and polkas of her vanished youth.