Even Mr. Clover joined in the general movement that thankfully relinquished paper and pencil, and sent everyone to the piano, flung open by Olga Duffle.
“Do play something,” Adrian pleaded.
“Oh, not me. Make your sister play. She plays so much better than I do.”
It was indubitably true that Flora played a great deal better than did Olga, yet nobody seemed to want Flora to play the piano, and Olga, even as she protested, slipped on to the music stool and ran her small fingers over the keys.
“I say, how well you do everything!” Adrian murmured ecstatically above her.
She looked up at him and smiled, showing all her little pointed teeth.
They clustered round her.
“Do you know ‘Oh, Kiss Me and I’ll Never Tell,’ that comes in that revue—I forget it’s name—the new one? It’s lovely.”
To the perceptions of Valeria Morchard, trained in the eclectic school of the Canon’s taste, the musical inspiration in question was not only undeserving of being called lovely, but was vulgar to the point of blatancy, ringing through the St. Gwenllian drawing-room in Olga’s little, high, soprano voice.
She was not at all surprised that Owen should look at her through his pince-nez with eyebrows expressively elevated, nor that Mr. Clover, presumably in a futile endeavour to spare the Canon’s ears, should unobtrusively go and shut the door.