CHAPTER VI
"Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two."
Dick Wantele opened the door of the drawing-room. Lined with panels of cedar-wood and sparsely furnished with fine examples of early French Empire furniture, the great room looked, as did so many of the apartments of Rede Place, foreign rather than English, and it was only used by Mr. and Mrs. Maule on the rare occasions when they gave a dinner-party.
The master and mistress of Rede Place were awaiting their guests. Richard Maule, his figure looking thinner, more attenuated than ever, leant heavily with his right hand on a stick, his left lay on the mantelpiece. Dick noticed that he looked more alive than usual; there were two spots of red on his cheeks. Mrs. Maule was moving restlessly about the room: she disliked exceedingly finding herself alone with her husband, and she seldom allowed so untoward an accident to befall her.
Wantele looked at her curiously. His cousin's wife had the power of ever surprising him anew. To-night it was her dress which surprised him. It was deep purple in tint, of a diaphanous material, and rendered opalescent, shot with gleams of pale blue and pale yellow, by some cunning arrangement of silk underneath. Made, as even he could see, with but slight regard to the fashion of the moment, Wantele realised that this gown, beautiful, even magnificent as was its effect, would not appear a proper evening dress to the conventional eye of Mrs. Pache and of Mrs. Pache's daughter.
A fold of the thin shimmering stuff veiled Athena's dimpled shoulders, and swept up almost to her throat, and her arms gleamed whitely through cunningly arranged twists of the same transparent stuff carried down to the wrist.
Her dark, naturally curling hair, instead of being puffed out stiffly as was the ugly fashion of the moment, was braided closely to her head, and on her head was placed a wreath made of bunches of small deep purple grapes unrelieved by leaves. The only ornament worn by her was a large burnt topaz—that stone which fire turns a rose red tint—attached to a seed pearl chain.
Wantele told himself with rueful amusement that Mrs. Pache would probably take the opportunity of wearing this evening her ancient diamond tiara and her most décolleté gown.