She slightly lifted the brim of her large hat, as though to render her meaning perfectly clear, and left the room.
Mrs. Bulteel’s plain, pinched face was further disfigured by a sneer.
“Poor woman!” she said spitefully. “She really can’t afford to criticize other people. She gets stouter every day, I do believe.”
“Is she really such a very good Bridge-player?” Mrs. Clarence asked, with a sort of restrained eagerness, as though ashamed of hoping—as she quite obviously did—that the answer would be in the negative.
“She plays a fair game—for one of your sex,” said the Greek ungallantly.
It was such small observations as this, which he let fall from time to time, that made Lydia feel almost certain that she disliked him, although at other times she was gratified by his half-covert admiration of her.
Presently the Bulteels went in pursuit of Hector and his dumb-bells; old Miss Lillicrap tottered off to scream shrilly for hot water from the top of the kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Clarence, glancing at Lydia with a friendly little furtive smirk, sidled out of the room to engage upon one of those mysterious futilities that served to bridge the gaps in the one regular occupation of her life: her attendance at meals.
Lydia and the Greek were left alone together in the drawing-room.
“The days are drawing in very fast,” he observed, gazing at the window.
Lydia felt slightly disappointed at the highly impersonal nature of the remark.