Virginia looked very tired indeed. She smiled at him sleepily. George always made her smile in the end.
“I feel myself getting more brilliant every moment,” Tarlyon said comfortably. “It’s this room, Marlay, that’s having a witty effect on me, I think. And I also think it’s pretty clever of you to have a quiet little house like this, where you can receive the lovely ladies who get bored with our conversation at Rupert Kare’s....”
“But their husbands can come too,” Ivor pointed out, “if they behave themselves.”
“Oh, I say!” Tarlyon stared, and laughed.
Virginia suddenly jumped up. In desperation, it seemed. And with a gesture the black anarchical hat crowned her head, her coat was to hand, and she was ready to go; and she was gone. Tarlyon followed reluctantly.
As he started off the car, she said to Ivor, in the front doorway: “We’ve had a lovely talk, Ivor—I’ve loved my evening with you. I’ll try to come again, only we are due off to the South any day——”
“Come on, Virginia!” came Tarlyon’s voice from the glistening shape of the car—charming young Charles Rolls’s legacy to England.
“Good-night, Ivor,” she said, and went swiftly.
“Good-night, Marlay, good-night,” came the gay waving voice of George Tarlyon, as the car curved softly round the drive and away to the London road. Ivor heard his laugh in the distance. An amusing man. Those two, out there....