“Stark isn’t a major yet; only a captain,” snapped Jack; then, realizing a tactical error, “And anyway, I never was in love with her.”
“Dinner is on the table, ma’m,” announced Smith. . . .
Dinner, quietly served by two maids in the dark, square dining-room,—oak-panelled, lit only by electric candles, mauve-shaded, on the oval table and the huge Chippendalish sideboard—was a leisurely meal. Thick soup followed the smoked salmon, grilled sole the soup, a chick en casserole the sole. Talk, family gossip of no interest to outsiders, flowed—slowly at first, quicker as Peter’s second-best Burgundy loosened constraint.
“And why,” asked Rawlings suddenly, “has Peter gone to Hamburg?”
“I think,” answered Patricia, always on guard against her brother-in-law’s curiosity, “that it’s something to do with cigars.”
“Cigars? You mean cigarettes, don’t you? He hardly bothers about the cigar business nowadays.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Patricia—knowing he wasn’t.
“When is he coming back?”
“Tomorrow, as far as I know.”
“Do you ever see Francis nowadays?” put in Violet. “I was trying to read something of his in the English Review just before we came out tonight. He’s a bit beyond me, you know.”