Lord Lathkill burst into a loud laugh, then was suddenly silent as the door noiselessly opened, and the dowager's white hair and pointed uncanny eyes peered in, then entered.
"I think I left my papers in here, Luke," she murmured.
"Yes, mother. There they are. We're just coming up."
"Take your time."
He held the door, and ducking forward, she went out again, clutching some papers. The Colonel had blenched yellow on his cheek-bones.
We went upstairs to the small drawing-room.
"You were a long time," said Carlotta, looking in all our faces. "Hope the coffee's not cold. We'll have fresh if it is."
She poured out, and Mrs. Hale carried the cups. The dark young woman thrust out her straight, dusky arm, offering me sugar, and gazing at me with her unchanging, yellow-brown eyes. I looked back at her, and being clairvoyant in this house, was conscious of the curves of her erect body, the sparse black hairs there would be on her strong-skinned dusky thighs. She was a woman of thirty, and she had had a great dread, lest she should never marry. Now she was as if mesmerised.
"What do you do usually in the evenings?" I said.
She turned to me as if startled, as she nearly always did when addressed.