Magda threw up her head, defying him.
“You propose to be waiting round to pick up the pieces, then?” she suggested nonchalantly.
But only the sound of the closing door answered her. Davilof had gone.
CHAPTER V
THE SWAN-MAIDEN
Lady Arabella was in her element. She had two brilliant and unattached young men dining with her—one, Michael Quarrington, a lion in the artistic world, and the other, Antoine Davilof, who showed unmistakable symptoms of developing sooner or later into a lion in the musical world.
It was Davilof who was responsible for the artist’s presence at Lady Arabella’s dinner table. She had expressed—in her usual autocratic manner—a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined upon the evening of the first performance of The Swan-Maiden as the appointed time.
Davilof appeared doubtful, and declared that Quarrington was leaving England and had already fixed the date of his departure.
“He’s crossing from Dover the very day before the one you want him to dine with you,” he told her.