“Coreopsis,” said Hugh smartly. “Cigarette, Edith?”
“Perhaps Mrs. Owen will,” said she.
Mrs. Owen looked round, as if she was afraid that the Literific were all concealed in the trees and were watching her. She occasionally smoked when she was surrounded by “the set”—but, then, London was so different.
“Well, if you will never, never tell,” she said. “I do smoke sometimes, though I can’t feel sure that I ought. I had a cigarette, I remember, after I came back from Tristan—your Tristan, Mr. Grainger. Oh, how I enjoyed it! and what a wreck I was next day.”
This sounded rather as if the cigarette was the wrecker, but she took one, blacked it all down one side with the smoke from the match, and leant back in her chair with a sense that she was doing exactly the right thing. Edith took one also, and here they all were, as Mrs. Owen gleefully thought, the author of “Gambits,” the new Tristan, and she, all smoking together. She felt that intimacy was, indeed, on the wing, and if she thought of the Alingtons at all she thought of them as the “poor Alingtons.”
Then Edith turned to her husband.
“Sit down, Hughie,” she said. “With Mrs. Owen’s leave I want to tell you what we have been talking about.”
Mrs. Owen put up deprecating hands in the attitude of prayer, palm to palm and fingers outstretched.
“Promise he shan’t scold me!” she said.
This was very winsome and called from Hugh, who was sitting a little behind her, and out of sight, a glare of concentrated hate. But Edith noticed neither the hate nor the winsomeness.