"Oh, that won't matter." Amy was laying down her palette and searching for matches as she spoke. There was cigarette ash all over the hearth in front of her little gas fire, and ash was scattered across the floor. The bed, covered with bright chintz, showed that she had lain upon it during the afternoon. "You'll be invited without him another time."
"Shall I?" It sent a spark of joy through Patricia to hear this. She looked gratefully at Amy's white face and smooth hair. "Really?"
Amy shrugged with a conceited air of boredom. "You made an impression last night," she announced. Patricia laughed gaily, and Amy continued: "It's easy enough, and it comes naturally to you. Of course, Monty's parties aren't what they were. He used to have a lot of decent people; but he's peculiar, you know. He gets tired of people, and drops them. It's the privilege you enjoy when you've got money. Only of course you've got to keep on making fresh friends, and he's not as bright as he used to be. He used to be able to talk. Now it isn't worth his while; so he says nothing at all. He thinks it. He's sardonic."
"He looks that," agreed Patricia, trying to seem as expert and as patronising as her friend. "But he looks interesting, as well; and that's a great deal."
"Oho! I should think he was. And as clever as the devil. But he's a beast."
"I don't mind that, so long as he isn't beastly to me," said Patricia. "I don't mind what anybody does, so long as they are nice to me."
Amy laughed, and professionally flicked the ash from her cigarette with a little finger. It was a laugh that held dryness.
"Oh, they'll all be nice to you," she observed. "No reason why they should be anything else."
Patricia pondered upon that suggestion, and upon the strange gleam in Amy's eye. She had so much affection to give, she thought, and she had met so much kindness in others, that there really did not seem to be anything but kindness in her whole life. Even Lucy, in her rough way, was kind. Amy, of course, did not know that, and had not meant to suggest it; but there were things which Patricia still did not understand at sight, in spite of her self-confidence in that direction.
"No," she said. "There isn't, is there. Except that I'm poor; but people don't notice that. Of course, Mr. Mayne was really very kind. But he's rather unbending, I think. He's ... well, he seemed to me to be rather out of place at Monty's."