"Her scene with old Lady Hayes must have been wicked," said Mrs. Davenport. "I can imagine her so well, lolling back in her chair with infinite languor, smoking cigarettes probably, and uttering slow, polished blasphemies about all her mother-in-law's most cherished beliefs."
"They are out in Algiers now," said Percy. "Eva suddenly expressed a wish to go there again. She likes the languid heat of the place. Jim Armine is with them."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Davenport, softly. "She is very cruel."
"She had the greatest distaste for her ordinary home life. Last year my father lost a lot of money, and we had to live very quietly at home in the country and retrench. Eva couldn't endure it. She had quite made up her mind that she would never fall in love at all. She will do something sublime if she does. She is quite capable of sacrificing herself or anybody else."
"A clear stage and a crowd to see," thought Mrs. Davenport, "and may I be in the stalls."
Meanwhile, the two lovers were talking at the very farthest corner of the drawing-room, but before the evening was over, the little cloud, which had just appeared over the horizon on the occasion when Reggie's mother had lost her way in the snow, gathered again, and this time it seemed to Gertrude to leave a little film of mist behind. Like the other two, they had been talking about Percy's sister, and Reggie had said suddenly,—
"She is perfectly lovely, I believe; they call her the most beautiful woman in London. Percy showed me her photograph. I want to see her very much."
This speech, made in absolute thoughtlessness, jarred somehow on Gertrude's sensibilities.
"I daresay there are many actresses as beautiful," she said, rather unnecessarily. "I don't think I should like her a bit. There was a man staying with us the other day who said she was perfectly reckless about what she did."
"Oh! a woman as beautiful as that can afford to be reckless," said Reggie. "She sets the fashion."