Lucia was not quite accustomed to this, for Georgie usually left any party when she left. She put her head in the air as she swept by him, but then relented again.
“Dine to-morrow, then? We won’t have any music after this feast to-night,” said she forgetting that the feast had been almost completely of her own providing. “But perhaps little game of cut-throat, you and Pepino and me.”
“Delightful,” said Georgie.
Olga hurried back after seeing off her other guests.
“Oh, Georgie, what richness,” she said. “By the way, of course it was Cortot who was playing the Moonlight faster than Cortot plays it.”
“I thought it probably would be,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that happens to Lucia. And now we know where we are. She’s going to make a circle in London and be its centre. Too thrilling! It’s all as clear as it can be. All we don’t know about yet is the pearls.”
“I doubt the pearls,” said Olga.
“No, I think there are pearls,” said Georgie, after a moment’s intense concentration. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have told me they appeared in the Sargent portrait of the aunt.”
Olga suddenly gave a wild hoot of laughter.