CHAPTER I
“It was your pal I wanted really—not you,” Antonia Verity informed Deb, when their friendship was sturdy enough to withstand such frankness, “I didn’t like you.”
“Jenny?—Yes, she was worth fifty of me.”
“And yet you’re not really humble,” the other laughed. “Ring for tea, Deb. I’m tired of seeing you brooding like a sphinx. The pleasure grows monotonous. I suppose you can’t brood while you eat macaroons?”
“Easily; they’re quite dry and manageable.”
“Tea, please, and a poached egg for Miss Marcus,” Antonia commanded of the servant. “I can’t help it if you don’t want it, Deb—you must be cured of that inscrutable habit. I just can’t bear it. How many men have called you Sphinx in your exotic career?”
“All, except one or two. It’s very popular. So is Serpent of the Nile and Cleopatra and little Princess of Egypt. When I am moved to cry ‘Yah, chestnut!’ to these endearments, they offer to strangle me in my own hair.”
“Which usually hangs down in readiness. You’re the only person I’ve met outside fiction whose hair naturally gravitates towards your heels. Even on the night we first met——”
“Yes. The soldier and I had been fooling.... Antonia, you guessed, didn’t you, that time—about Jenny?”
“I saw that she was really ill when I came into your room. And I was puzzled, because I had been quite sure before, that you and she were in some plot to escape from La llorraine. But I doubt if she knew herself, in that semi-hysterical condition, when sham ended and the real began. What did she actually die of?”