She moved closer to him and with deft fingers applied her tiny lace handkerchief to his flushed cheeks and eyes, laughing audibly as she did so; a low gurgle of infinite sweetness and concern.
He stood like a statue, scarcely breathing, the veins in his throat throbbing violently.
“There!” she said, and deliberately touched the mouchoir to her own smiling lips before replacing it in her bodice next to the warm, soft skin. “Lydia must not see that her big baby sweetheart has been crying,” she went on, and if there was mockery in her voice it was lost on him. He could only stare as if bereft of all his senses.
“I have been thinking, Frederic,” she said, suddenly serious, “perhaps it would be better if we were not alone when the others come up. Go at once and fetch the two old men. Tell them I expect them here to witness the magic. It appears to be a family party, so why exclude them? Be quick!”
He dashed off to obey her command. She lighted a cigarette at the table, her unsmiling eyes fixed on the door to the Hindu's closet. Then, with a little sigh, she sank down on the broad couch and stretched her supple body in the ecstasy of complete relaxation.
The scene at the dinner-table had been most distressing. Up to the instant of the outburst her husband had been in singularly gay spirits, a circumstance so unusual that the whole party wondered not a little. If the others were vaguely puzzled by his high humour, not so Yvonne. She understood him better than anyone else in the world; she read his mind as she would have read an open book.
There was riot, not joy, in the heart of the brilliant talker at the head of the table. He was talking against the savagery that strained so hard at its leash.
At her right sat Frederic, at her left the renowned Dr Hodder, whose feats at the operating table were vastly more successful than his efforts at the dinner-table. He was a very wonderful surgeon, but equally famous as a bore of the first rank. Yvonne could not endure him. His jokes were antediluvian, and his laughter over them an abomination.
He had an impression, as many famous men have, that the sole duty of a dinner guest is to be funny in the loudest voice possible, drowning out all competition, and to talk glowingly about the soup, as if nothing else was required to convince the hostess that he considered her dinner irreproachable and her cook a jewel. Still, it was agreed Dr Hodder was a wonderful surgeon.
Mrs Desmond and Lydia were there. (This was an excellent opportunity to entertain them on an occasion of more or less magnitude.) There were also present Bertie Gunning and his pretty wife, Maisie, both of whom Yvonne liked; and the Followed sisters, with two middle-aged gentlemen from one of the clubs.