"Look at me!" she said. "Tell me if I look tired!"
He laid the collar down on her table: her neck seemed to him so infinitely more beautiful than the gorgeous bauble with which it had been covered, a Beauty released from beauteous bonds.
"Not very. Ah, Dodo, and this is the best of all, when they have all gone, and you are left."
She put her face up to his.
"Why, of course," she said. "Do you suppose I wasn't looking forward to this one minute alone with you all the evening? I was, my dear, though if I said I thought of it all the time, I should be telling a silly lie. But it was anchored firmly in my mind all the time. Oh, what pretty speeches for a middle-aged old couple to make to each other! But the fact is that we get on very nicely together. Good-night, old boy. It's all too lovely. Oh, Daddy! Fancy becoming Daddy! Oh, by the way, did Hugh come? I didn't see him."
"Yes, he sat out a couple of dances with Nadine, and then went away."
"Poor old chap!" said Dodo.
As has been mentioned, Dodo proposed to take her family and a great many other people as well to spend Christmas down at Meering, which at this inclement time of the year often had spells of warm and genial weather. Scattered through the same weeks there were to be several shooting-parties at Winston, but motor-cars, driven at a sufficiently high speed, made light of the difficulty of being in two places at the same time, and on the day after the dance she talked these arrangements over with Nadine.
"In any case," she said, "you can be hostess in one house and I, in the other, so that we can be in two places at once quite easily, so Jack is wrong as usual. Jack dear, I said 'as usual.'"