Merle laughed, and turning out the electric lights cunningly fitted into the three-tiered gilt candelabra, switched on instead the tiny red lamp which stood beside her Second Empire bedstead.
“Voilà! The appropriate lighting for the traditional girlish-chatter-while-they-brush-their-hair. Are you serious in proposing to admit a man to our duet?”
“Quite, if we can find one to suit. I want to try a trio; it might be interesting.”
“It might be dangerous,” Merle supplemented. She sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped about her knees, the tapestried canopy casting a deep shadow on her delicately-cut features, flawless as a profile on a cameo, colourless as ivory. Something of the French château yet lurked in her quaintly courteous manners; something of the French convent in the soft voice, in the heavy eyelids swift to drop as an overweary flower. The des Essarts were of pure Gallic stock, though their devotion to the Royalist cause had half a century before caused them to seek a permanent dwelling in England. But Peter declared that Merle still carried about with her a permanent aura of white lilies in a cloister garden; that she should by rights always be clad in an Empire satin frock, high under the arms; and that if she followed her natural instincts, she would never enter or quit a room without a deep reverence.
She was certainly “of a loveliness,” as Nicole was wont to declare, morning and evening, like a Benediction.
“It might be dangerous,” Merle repeated thoughtfully.
“You mean, if one of us fell in love with him?”
“Or both.”
“‘The Man Who Came Between Them,’ or ‘The Eternal Triangle,’ 419th time of representation!” Peter flung round to face her companion, hands dramatically clutching at the toilet-table behind her.
“So, after all we’ve been to each other,” she declaimed, a long pause between each spitten word, “to let a man rupture our friendship!”