"Never mind me, I'm quite"--Aliette glanced round the comfortable drawing-room, so unlike the spinster-haunted wilderness of the Mansions--"resigned to my temporary fate."
"Rubbish!" retorted Julia; and went on to elaborate the plan that they should move from Baron's Court as soon as ever they could find some residence, the more expensive the better, in Inner London.
"You must be seen everywhere," she went on. "You must entertain and be entertained. In a word, Aliette--like Mrs. Carrington--must afficher herself as Mrs. Cavendish. Never mind what it costs. I'll finance you."
But Aliette's whole nature recoiled from Julia's scheme.
She, had it not been for Ronnie's career, would have been more than content to wait a year, two years, a whole lifetime for freedom. Her idea--she told them--was to take some little cottage, not too far removed from London; so that "Ronnie could come down every week-end."
Nevertheless, since any hope of freedom was tantalizing, because now, always and always stronger, there mounted in her the conviction that one day she would have a child by Ronnie, Aliette so far weakened from her resolution against "the flaunting policy" as to accept Julia's invitation, telephoned next day, to share her box for the first night of Patrick O'Riordan's "Khorassan."
3
Ronnie's "wife," though too proud to make the first move, often wondered why Mary O'Riordan, eager enough to accept her championing in a similar situation, should have taken so little trouble to reciprocate, now that reciprocation was so obviously indicated: but, dressing for the theater in the unkindly bedroom whose harsh lights made her needlessly afraid of the mirror, she decided that sheer delicacy alone had restrained her old school-friend from getting into touch; and anticipated their inevitable meeting without a qualm. It would be nervous work, displaying one's self in Julia Cavendish's box before a "first-night" audience (unwise work, thought Aliette, unwise of Ronnie and his mother to have been so persistent); but Mary's presence would at least furnish a guarantee against complete ostracism. Whatever other people might do, she could rely on Mary's visiting their box in the entr'acte, on Mary's going out of her way to demonstrate sympathy.
"Looking forward to it, darling?" interrupted Ronnie, entering with the usual perfunctory knock from the bathroom, where he had been doing his best to shave, for the second time that day, in lukewarm water.
"Not exactly." Aliette dismissed her maid.