“You don’t know the bad blood which was hidden among the champagne bottles on the buffet,” he said.
Sophy was charmed to hear about these smart people—charmed most of all at the idea that they were miserable—that the women whose toilettes her soul sickened for often wore the hair-shirt of the penitent under a gown which Society papers extolled.
Sefton was very attentive to Sophy, albeit his furtive glances were always returning to the lovely face on the other side of the table. Poor Sophy thrilled at startling possibilities. He had admired Eve in the past, had seemed devoted almost to the point of proposing. And she, Sophy, had been told she was growing daily more like Eve. More wonderful things had happened than that he should fall in love with her—the old fancy for Eve reviving for Eve’s younger sister. Now that the detrimental father had taken up his abode permanently on the Continent, his domestic responsibilities much lightened by Eve’s liberality to her sisters, there could be less objection to an alliance with the house of Marchant. Mr. Sefton was his own master. He had lost Eve by his hesitancy and hanging back. Might he not act more nobly in his dealings with Eve’s sister? That low, thrilling note which he knew how to put into his voice, which was a mere mechanism of the man, touched Sophy’s senses like exquisite music. Her eyelids sank, her cheek kindled, though he talked only of common things.
He had seen enough of Eve, while thus entertaining Sophy, to be assured that she had lately suffered some painful experience—a quarrel with Vansittart, perhaps. Or it might be that silent jealousy had been gnawing at her heart since that day on the river. No woman could see Lisa’s behaviour and not be jealous. The husband would explain, no doubt, but explanations go for very little in such a case. They are accepted for the moment; wife and husband “kiss again with tears;” and the next morning at the breakfast-table the husband sees brooding brows, and knows that there is a scorpion coiled in his wife’s heart. Her faith in him has been shaken. He may scotch the snake, but he cannot kill it.
Eve was glad when Mrs. Montford gave the signal for a move to the drawing-room. The men stayed behind to smoke, all but Sefton, who followed the ladies, a proceeding which Sophy ascribed to his interest in her conversation. At the luncheon-table Eve had been all talk and gaiety, deceiving every one except the man who watched her face in its occasional moments of repose. In the drawing-room she abandoned all effort, sank into a chair near the window, evidently sick at heart, glancing first at the clock on the chimney-piece and then at the street to see if her carriage were approaching. She had ordered it for a quarter past three. She started up the instant it was announced, and went over to Mrs. Montford to make her adieux, that lady being deep in a murmured discussion of the latest Mayfair scandal with a brace of matrons, while Sophy was being taken round the rooms by Sefton, to look at the pictures and curios.
“You needn’t have been in such an absurd hurry to come away,” remonstrated this young lady in a lugubrious tone, as they drove homeward. “Nobody else was moving.”
“They will be gone in a quarter of an hour. Only the bores ever linger after a London luncheon. Everybody has something to do.”
“We have nothing to do till five o’clock; unless you go to Lady Thornton’s at home before five. The card says four till seven.”
“Then we can go at six. That will be quite early enough.”