“Oh, no, I shan’t forget,” she assured him seriously.
Shaking hands, he detained hers in his for a moment before releasing it.
VI
Maurice Lucian could only remember having dined at Squires once or twice before, although he had sometimes played billiards with the young men there. It was, he imagined, in order to afford another game of billiards, that he had been invited there now.
It interested him to see the drawing-room at Squires, when he entered it at a quarter past eight that evening.
The pictures on the walls, nearly all of them rather old-fashioned water-colour copies “from the flat,” were carefully lit up by candles in sconces grouped amongst them.
Very beautiful hot-house plants were arranged here and there in stiff groups.
Also arranged in stiff groups, and very much less beautiful than the hot-house plants, were the inmates.
He saw Rose Aviolet, of whom he was thinking most, directly.
Whereas the square neck of Lady Aviolet’s black velvet gown was carefully filled in with equally black net, and Miss Grierson-Amberly’s plain white satin displayed only a tiny triangular patch of fair, sunburnt red neck, Rose Aviolet’s evening dress was cut low, showing her fine neck and shoulders to great advantage. There was a great deal of jet about it, that jingled when she moved, and the doctor noticed that she wore a ring on her middle finger, and that the other women did not, and that instead of a pearl necklace, she had on a string of carved black wooden beads.