“Men seldom speak of the woman they admire—especially if the lady is not in society—and Sefton is reticent about a good many things.”
After this they talked of trifles, lightly, but with a somewhat studied lightness. Eve seemed again content; but her gaiety was gone, as if her spirits had drooped with the vanishing of the sun, which now at five o’clock was hidden by threatening clouds.
At Richmond Bridge they left their boat, to be taken back by a waterman, and walked through the busy town to the station. An express took them to London in good time for dressing and dining at Lady Hartley’s state dinner. She had a large house in Hill Street this year, and was entertaining a good deal.
“My dear Eve, you are looking utterly washed out,” she said to her sister-in-law in the drawing-room after dinner. “You must come to us at Redwold directly after Goodwood—you could come straight from Goodwood, don’t you know—and let me nurse you.”
“You are too kind. I think, though, it would be a greater rest if I were to go to Fernhurst for a few days, and let the sisters and Nancy take care of me. A taste of the old poverty, the whitewashed attics, and the tea-dinners would act as a tonic. I am debilitated by pleasures and luxuries.”
“You were looking bright enough last night at Mrs. Cameron’s French play.”
“Was I? Perhaps I laughed too much at Coquelin cadet, or eat too many strawberries.”
Lady Hartley had an evening party after the dinner, and it was a shock for Vansittart on coming into the drawing-room at half-past ten, after a long-drawn-out political discussion with a big-wig of Sir Hubert’s party, to find Sefton and Eve sitting side by side in a flowery nook near the piano, where at this moment Oscar de Lampion, the Belgian tenor, was casting his fine eyes up towards the ceiling, preparatory to the melting strains of his favourite serenade—
“And them canst sleep, while from the rain-washed lawn