He looked at her gravely.
“I think,” he said, “that some one ought to warn her.”
“It is Number 8, Cavendish Square,” she answered simply.
Courtlaw found himself ushered without questions into Annabel’s long low drawing-room, fragrant with flowers and somewhat to his surprise, crowded with guests. From the further end of the apartment came the low music of a violin. Servants were passing backwards and forwards with tea and chocolate. For a moment he did not recognize Annabel. Then she came a few steps to meet him.
“Mr. Courtlaw, is it not,” she remarked, with lifted eyebrows. “Really it is very kind of you to have found me out.”
He was bereft of words for a moment, and in that moment she escaped, having passed him on deftly to one of the later arrivals.
“Lady Mackinnor,” she said, “I am sure that you must have heard of Mr. David Courtlaw. Permit me to make him known to you—Mr. Courtlaw—Lady Mackinnor.”
With a murmured word of excuse she glided away, and Courtlaw, who had come with a mission which seemed to him to be one of life or death, was left to listen to the latest art jargon from Chelsea. He bore it as long as he could, watching all the time with fascinated eyes Annabel moving gracefully about amongst her guests, always gay, with a smile and a whisper for nearly everybody. Grudgingly he admired her. To him she had always appeared as a mere pleasure-loving parasite—something quite insignificant. He had pictured her, if indeed she had ever had the courage to do this thing, as sitting alone, convulsed with guilty fear, starting at her own shadow, a slave to constant terror. And instead he found her playing the great lady, and playing it well. She knew, or guessed his mission too, for more than once their eyes met, and she laughed mockingly at him. At last he could bear it no longer. He left his companion in the midst of a glowing eulogy of Bastien Leparge, and boldly intercepted his hostess as she moved from one group to join another.
“Can you spare me a moment?” he asked. “I have a message from your sister.”