Except for Lambone’s unquenchable flow it had not been a very talkative party. To-night it was less talkative than ever. “This is too perfect,” Margaret Means had sighed. “I can’t talk. I just thank God I am alive,” and she had nestled into her big deck-chair upon the terrace. This was the girl—it had suddenly become apparent to Bobby a fortnight ago in London—whom Devizes intended to marry. Abruptly she had come upon the scene to destroy the triangle that had obsessed Bobby’s imagination. A sweetly pretty fragile thing she was; in the twilight she seemed as faint and fragrant as nightstock, and she was a wonderful pianist. Last night she had played for two hours. Paul’s sister, Miss Lambone, had been evoked from somewhere in the west of England to come and be hostess to the engaged couple. Bobby had tried to talk to Christina Alberta about Margaret, but Christina Alberta hadn’t wanted to talk about her. “You see,” said Christina Alberta compactly, “she has opened the whole world of music to him. That’s what brought them together. She’s clever; she’s very clear and clever.
“I’d never heard of her—until you mentioned their engagement.
“They’ve gone to concerts together and that sort of thing. He’s known her much longer than he has known me.”
“When did you first meet Devizes?”
“About the time my Daddy came to Midgard Street. As recently as that. It’s hardly six months. Paul Lambone took me to him to get advice about Daddy. But they have been going about—for more than a year. I thought it was just music that interested them. They’d seemed to be friends. And I thought he didn’t mean to marry again. He just suddenly decided.”
Christina Alberta reflected. “That’s the way with life, Bobby. Things accumulate, and then you suddenly decide.”
“Had she been undecided? Had she made him wait?”
“Not her,” said Christina Alberta with a remarkable hardness in her voice.
“No,” she said. “He decided.”
She seemed to feel there was still something to express. “He just took hold of the situation.”