The women were on the terrace now; the men inside. Through the windows of the west wing, open from floor to ceiling to the soft night air, the big dining-table gleamed with linen, silver, and crystal, in not ungraceful disarray, and above it hung a thin haze of blue-gray smoke, through which the shirt-bosoms and white waistcoats of the men stood oddly out, seeming to have no relation to their owners, whose faces were cut off by the deep-red candle-shades from the light, and so from the view of those outside. Now and again their laughter came out through the windows in rollicking little gusts, and immediately thereafter the haze of smoke was reinforced.
"What an amusing time they always seem to have, once they're rid of us!" said Mrs. Ratchett, almost resentfully. "If one could be a fly, now, and perch in comfort, upside down, upon the ceiling—"
"One would get a vast deal of tobacco-smoke into one's lungs," put in Mrs. Carnby, "and a vast store of unrepeatable anecdotes into one's memory. I really can't approve of your project, Ethel, and I'm convinced that, to your particular style of beauty, it would be most unbecoming to perch—particularly upside down!"
"Oh, the men!" exclaimed old Mrs. Lister, with a kind of ecstatic wriggle. "What do you suppose?—but of course we shall never know—I dare say we'd be quite shocked—but it sounds entertaining—and they say, you know, that the cleverest stories—and Mr. Radwalader must be an adept—if only we could—!"
"For my part," observed Madame Palffy majestically, "I have no desire to overhear anything in the nature of double entendre."
"Oh, shade of Larousse!" murmured Mrs. Carnby into her coffee-cup. "Where did the creature learn her French? Shall we take a little walk?" she added aloud, turning to Margery.
"Why, yes—with pleasure, Mrs. Carnby," answered the girl, with a quick start. Her eyes had been fixed upon an indistinct form beyond the window of the dining-room, which was the person of Mr. Andrew Vane.
For a few moments they trod the winding gravel path in silence. Then, as a clump of shrubbery hid the house from view, she stopped impulsively, and laid her hand on the arm of her hostess.
"Fairy godmother—" she began.
"Now, my dear girl," interrupted Mrs. Carnby, "don't say anything you'll be sorry for afterwards. I'm a very vain, weak, silly, gossipy old woman—but I am a woman, Margery, and that means that I often see things I'm not meant to see, and which I wish I hadn't. Don't give me your confidence just because you feel that I may have guessed—"