Her golden hair shone against darkly splendid furs, and her luminous gaze strayed continually to some far horizon and was continually recalled with a start that just contrived not to be imperceptible.
“It is too delightful to be in an atmosphere like this one,” she murmured to Lady Argent in the hall, and bent over her plate at luncheon for a long moment with a reverence which far surpassed the gentle murmur in which her hostess indulged.
When curried eggs were succeeded by cutlets Nina cast a gravely wondering look around her.
“Friday?” she murmured gently. “I wonder if I might ask—ah! I see you, too, fast on Fridays.”
“Oh no,” said Lady Argent gently, “I only abstain from meat—really no privation at all—I’m not very fond of meat, and it’s so much better for one to have fish and eggs and vegetables and things, quite apart from what one always feels to be the cruelty of it, though I’m afraid one doesn’t think about it very often, except just when one actually sees the lambs playing about in the fields, or the chickens being killed in that dreadfully cruel way, poor things.”
“We should all be infinitely better physically and mentally if we only had one meal a day. Just,” said Nina with poignant simplicity, “a little fruit or uncooked nuts, and a draught of water. I’ve always said that I should like to live as the old hermits did.”
Frances was aware that Nina had always said so, and wondered vaguely why she was for the first time rendered slightly uncomfortable by the aspiration.
“May I give you some fish, Mrs. Severing?” asked Ludovic matter-of-factly.
“Please do,” she smiled. “I don’t actually belong to your beautiful Faith, but I love to live up to all the dear old symbols.”
“You couldn’t call turbot a symbol, exactly,” said Lady Argent rather doubtfully, “and I do hope you’ll give Mrs. Severing a respectable slice, my dear boy, for she must be very hungry after such a long drive.”