The latter tore it open and read the few lines hastily:
Dear Henry,
If you could spare a few minutes, I should be glad if you would come round to my apartment.
Yours,
Violet.
Hunterleys twisted the note up in his fingers.
"Tell Lady Hunterleys that I will be round in a few moments," he instructed the servant.
Richard took up his stick and hat.
"If you have an opportunity," he said, "ask Lady Hunterleys what she thinks about a little party on the yacht. If one could get the proper people together—"
"I'll tell her," Hunterleys promised. "You'd better wait till I get back."
He made his way to the other wing of the hotel. For the first time since he had been staying there, he knocked at the door of his wife's apartments. Her maid admitted him with a smile. He found Violet sitting in the little salon before a writing-table. The apartment was luxuriously furnished and filled with roses. Somehow or other, their odour irritated him. She rose from her place and hastened towards him.