Val looked at Lucilla.
There was something not at all unlike amusement on Miss Morchard’s face, but Val did not think that it was caused by the humour of “Oh, Kiss Me and I’ll Never Tell.” Rather it might have been born of a gentle irony, embracing alike the puzzled distaste of Flora, the obvious terror of the curate lest he should be supposed to be enjoying the entertainment, the absorption with which Captain Cuscaden, Adrian, and even Miss Admaston stood and listened, the supercilious detachment of Owen Quentillian, the complacent unconsciousness of the small, pert singer at the piano. No doubt Lucilla could have detected, had she cared to do so, the unspecified emotions that Val suspected of being written upon her own unsmiling face.
She felt suddenly impatient.
“We’re all intolerable. Lucilla is superior, and Flossie takes this rubbish au grand serieux, like a crime, and Owen is thinking how deplorable it is that idiotic words should be set to inferior music, and put before the British public for its education.... I can hear exactly what he’ll say about it afterwards.”
It struck her that the anticipation scarcely boded well for a life that was in future to be spent in Quentillian’s company.
“My dusky gal is black as coal
“But she’s just the whitest, brightest soul.”
carolled Olga.
“I love the darky girls, don’t you?”
“Rather.”