Collingwood seemed vastly amused. He assumed the air of a comedian. His hands fluttered before him in pantomime. His handsome face became droll and merry.
"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said.
Lord Ellerdine nodded with an anxious look in his eyes towards Lady Attwill. "Now try that," he said.
"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" said Lady Attwill with perfect naturalness and ease.
"There you are!" said Collingwood.
The middle-aged fool in the arm-chair was quite interested and pleased. He saw nothing of the grimness which underlay this gay, light-hearted chatter, in this gay and brilliant room. The other two, man and woman, were playing their parts most skilfully—not so much to deceive Ellerdine, but to trick themselves into the belief that they were not engaged in a very dirty, ugly business.
It's an extraordinary thing, but nevertheless perfectly true, that people who are able to infuse a sinister and tragic moment with mocking gaiety certainly provide for themselves an anodyne to the pain and fear it would otherwise bring them.
No doubt that is why the devil is generally represented as smirking or leering.
The door opened and the Scotch-French waiter with a large tray entered, followed by another also carrying a tray, but whose swarthy features and thick purple lips proclaimed him no hybrid, but a true son of the Côte d'Azur.
Lord Ellerdine jumped up. "Food!" he said. "I am starving."