A red-lit and palm-shaded recess divided the drawing-rooms from the dining-room, which ran across the width of the house at the back. Mrs. Hazeldean hesitated; then she caught Mrs. Wesson’s watchful glance, lifted her head with a smile and followed her companion.
They sat down on a small sofa under the palms, and a couple, who had been in search of the same retreat, paused on the threshold, and with an interchange of glances passed on. Mrs. Hazeldean smiled more vividly.
“Where are my roses? Didn’t you get them?” Prest asked. He had a way of looking her over from beneath lowered lids, while he affected to be examining a glove-button or contemplating the tip of his shining boot.
“Yes, I got them,” she answered.
“You’re not wearing them. I didn’t order those.”
“No.”
“Whose are they, then?”
She unfolded her mother-of-pearl fan, and bent above its complicated traceries.
“Yours? Well, obviously. But I suppose someone sent them to you?”