"I will explain, O! woman, how this house has been built, though verily would I have had your help in these past months, for how was I to know in what or which your desires lay.
"Behold, the rooms upon the level of the ground are rooms for your repasts, and rooms for receiving your guests; above are the rooms for your slumber, and your toilet, for the bathing of your white body, and for your entertainment. In the latter you will find all that appertains to music, to the dance, to the study of books, to the flash of the needle. Above again are the rooms open to the breezes of the night, screened by light screens to enable you, unveiled, to look out upon the world, and yet keep you hidden from the curious eyes of your many slaves who, under the rule of black Mustapha, live within the walls and near to hand to do your slightest bidding, but hidden until you call so as not to disturb you by their unseemly presence. They may not die within the wall, neither may they give birth therein, still less may they make merry without your permission. The slightest breach of your laws will see them flogged to death and cast out into the desert sand. One suite of rooms is pink, and one white, and one is palest heliotrope, and yet another black, and there are many others. May it find favour in your eyes. If perchance it pleases not, then shall it be razed to the ground, and rebuilt upon your design."
And Jill had walked through a building such as she had not dreamed of in her wildest fantasies, and having very sweetly thanked the Arab, had clapped her hands, and being of perverse mood, had indifferently bidden him good night, and entered the rose pink sleeping-room where the couch had been designed by love, and the colouring reflected by the great mirrors by passion; to slip from out her perfumed raiment, and step down into the pink marble Roman bath and hide beneath the rose-tinted waters, the rose-tinted glory of her perfect body.
CHAPTER XXVI
And just as the dead cheetah was laid at Jill's feet, a huge bull dog, with a face like a gargoyle to be seen on the Western transept of Notre-Dame, and a chest like a steel safe, supported on legs which had given way under the weight, walked across from Sir John Wetherbourne, Bart., of Bourne Manor, and other delectable mansions, to lay his snuffling, stertorous self at the feet of his mistress, the Honourable Mary Bingham, pronounced Beam, in whose sanctum sat the man on the bleak November evening, and of whom he had just asked advice.
People always asked advice of Mary, she was of that kind. On this occasion she sat looking across at the man she loved, and had always loved, just as he loved and had always loved her, since the days they had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would some time marry, though never a word had been uttered, and being sure and certain of each other, they had never worried, or forced the pace. And then Jill had disappeared! Gone was their pal, their little sister whom they had petted and spoiled from the day she too had appeared on a fat pony, gone without a trace, leaving these two honest souls, in a sudden unnecessary burst of altruism, to come to a mutual, unspoken understanding that their love must be laid aside in folds of soft tissue, that they must turn the key upon their treasure, until such time as definite news of the lost girl should allow them to bring it out with decency, and deck it with orange blossom. And worry having entered upon them, they both suddenly discovered that uncertainty is a never-failing aperitif, and they both hungered for a care-free hour like unto those they had carelessly let slip.
Foolish perhaps, but they loved Jill, making of themselves brother and sister; hurt to the quick when after the débâcle she had sweetly declined all offers of help, and worried to death when she had started out on the hare-brained scheme of earning her own living off her own bat.
Mary Bingham was one of those delightful women peculiar to England, restful to look at, restful to know. Her thick, glossy brown hair was coiled neatly in plaits, no matter what the fashion; her skin, devoid of powder, did not shine, even on the hottest day; her smile was a benison, and her teeth and horsemanship perfect.
Her clothes? Well, she was tailor-made, which means that near a horse she beat other women to a frazzle, but on a parquet floor, covered with dainty, wispy, fox-trotting damsels, she showed up like a double magenta-coloured dahlia in a bed of anemones.
Jack Wetherbourne was of the same comfortable and honest type, and they loved each other in a tailor-made way; one of those tailor-mades of the best tweed, which, cut without distinctive style, is warranted with an occasional visit to the cleaners to last out its wearer; a garment you can always reply on, and be sure of finding ready for use, no matter how long you have kept it hidden in your old oak chest, or your three-ply wardrobe, or whatever kind of cupboard you may have managed to make out of your life. Although no word of love had ever passed between them, you would have sworn they had been married for years, as they sat on each side of the fire; Mary in a black demi-toilette, cut low at the neck, which does not mean décolleté by any means, but which does invariably spell dowdiness, and Jack Wetherbourne with his chin in his hand, and a distinct frown on his usually undisturbed countenance.