“You’re just right! Tommy whispered to me in the car that you were wonderful,—the first thing you know he’ll be flirting with you.”
“Don’t be so foolish! Any one can see that he’s crazy about you.”
“Well, that kind of insanity doesn’t last. These little affairs are good for a while, but something always happens sooner or later.”
She spoke with cheerful indifference as though it were the inevitable ordering of fate that such affairs should be brief.
At the table, with candles diffusing a yellow glow upon the silver and crystal the party struck at once a key of gaiety.
“Don’t be afraid of the cocktail, Grace,” said Kemp, lifting his glass; “only a little orange juice and a very good gin I planted out here in the woods before prohibition.”
“When all the rest of the world is dry Tommy will still have a few bottles put away,” said Irene. “There’s going to be champagne, too! Here’s to you, Tommy!”
Grace sipped the cocktail warily, drank a third of it and put it down with a covert glance at the others to see whether they were watching her.
“We’re all entitled to a dividend,” said Kemp. “Get busy, Jerry.”
Grace was fingering the stem of the cocktail glass, meditating whether she should try it again, when Trenton met her gaze. Irene and Kemp were talking animatedly, quite indifferent to the other members of the party.