Her temper resolved itself into action. There was mischief in her selection of the pure ivory taffeta dress, the golden shoes, and cobwebby gold stockings that the supple fancy could continue on limbs straight and slender inside the blown white cup of her skirts. Deb could wear white and pearl and dove-tints without fear of looking miss-ish; by contrast with her deep colours, they enhanced her vivid grace more than the traditional purple or flame. Sufficient of purple in her sombre twilight eyes; flame enough in her lips. Her hair she turned inwards, concealing its masses so skilfully, that, sleek on top and bulging rhythmically into a smooth pear-shape round the cheeks and the nape of the neck, it gave her somewhat the appearance of the knave of clubs as pictured in a pack of cards.
Then she went back to the mirror, and scrutinized her looks long and earnestly, and—like all heroines in every crisis of each love-affair—reflected how queer it was that just these curves and colours should have been the haphazard outward accessories to—her soul? ... no, souls were mawkish things!—to her essential Deb-ness.
CHAPTER V
I
The girl who was playing the accompaniments to La llorraine’s singing glanced aside once or twice from Deb to Jenny, contrasting mystery and mobility. Jenny attracted her the most; she made up her mind to speak to Jenny directly the song was over.... And then she saw Jenny bite her lip, clutch tightly at the arm of the chair ... after a minute or two of apparent bodily agony, rise and grope an unsteady way through the edges and corners of furniture, to the door. Antonia Verity went on with the Aria from “Samson et Delilah.” She had seen a swift look interchanged between Deb and Jenny, just before the spasm of pain which drove the latter from the room. Also, in the instant’s silence before the prima-donna had begun to let herself go in “Mon cœur s’ouvre a ta voix,” Antonia fancied she had detected a scraping sound and heavy breathing outside the door.
Stella had also remarked Jenny’s symptoms, and half rose to follow her out without interrupting the singing; but Deb murmured: “All right, Auntie, I’ll go” ... and slipped noiselessly in Jenny’s wake. Dolph was wrapt up in Manon, who was wrapt up in her own indifference to Dolph. And La llorraine was back in the Paris opera-house, eyes uplifted to the imaginary tiers of packed faces, voice soaring resonantly to a non-existent acoustic.... Antonia wondered if the drum of her left ear were being shattered; she also wondered a little what was afoot outside the door....
II
“Did you hear me sleuthing?” queried Ames, contentedly lopping the haddock to fit Cora’s limitations.
“Is that what you were doing? Of course we heard.” The three had been recently present at a cinema film which portrayed a quantity of flickering doors, set in a flickering corridor, down which a flickering procession of waiters, detectives and gentlemen burglars—all impartially in evening dress—portrayed the diverting art of sleuthing: they skulked along close to the wall, one arm shielding their eyes to avoid observation, and at every bedroom door they bent and applied an ear to the keyhole—then started erect, confirmed in their worst suspicion, and went to the next keyhole....