"I might have called for you if I had known you were coming," he said, unfolding his napkin.
"If you had, I should have kept you waiting," responded Patricia, with a small grimace.
"Were you busy up to the last minute, then?"
"Beyond that!" They laughed together.
Then Edgar glanced round the handsome room with its high and painted ceiling and its curiously severe walls of luminous grey. It was not a warm-looking room. There were no pictures; but the furniture was old and good. The table at which they sat was circular, and the light above caught all the brilliances of glass and silver ware, while it increased the cold darkness of the walls.
"Do you know these people?" he next asked.
"Mrs. Tallentyre was at the party. Isn't she unhappy-looking?"
"Perhaps it's only her manner." Edgar strove to make his tone light; for his assumptions were otherwise.
"No. It's real." They both verified the impression. To Edgar it appeared that Mrs. Tallentyre made adroit use of cosmetics; but they heightened the hard glitter of her eyes, and the markedly anxious vivacity of her manner. Patricia resumed: "Her husband was at the party. A horrid man."
Well: Edgar wondered what she was doing here at all, sitting at Monty's left hand and talking to Quellan as if she had something to gain from him. Mrs. Quellan, fortunately, was engaged with Monty. Jacobs, having served the soup, was at the sideboard with the decanters under his eye.