"Starving!" replied Leah, with a wry smile. "Hush!"
The warning hissed through the chatter of Joan and Askew, who entered, almost riotously happy. Their exuberant manners and frank speech brought a wholesome breeze of cleansing honesty into the atmosphere of stale rascality. The bracing wind blew Lady Jim out of dark chambers into the day-lit spaces of the commonplace. With the protean capability of women she flashed as a sun from passing storm-clouds, to shine on the honest and hungry.
"Thanks awfully for your invitation to luncheon," said Askew.
"Which you forgot."
"Did I ever receive it?" he asked doubtfully.
"Did not my last remark imply the invitation. Remarkable!"
So irrelevant sounded the last word that Aksakoff queried its reason.
"Not that a man should forget an invitation," she explained; "but that a single meal should escape his greedy memory."
"You make me out to be a gourmet," hinted the invited guest.
"Why not a gourmand? One speaks French in Paris."