“Nice,” he said, “is just like Blackpool, except that the air is cleaner at Blackpool. We are thus led to the unpatriotic conclusion that if Blackpool were as far from England as Nice is, we would at this very moment be in Blackpool.”
“I wouldn’t,” Virginia said. She turned in her chair to stare definitely at her husband. She would sometimes turn that sudden and definite stare on to a man she knew well, as though recasting a theory about him. Virginia never uttered her theories about people, so one could never tell if they were silly or not. He gave her a cigarette.
The flank of the hill of Cimiez, as has been described, did homage to their prejudice, for the white town of Nice was not visible below them, there was but the sea and the bending coast towards Cannes. Far on the right lay the little town of Antibes, a wan little cluster of luxury in the sunlight: and the hills that hid Grasse waved gently back into the distance of more serious (and less expensive) France. The sun owned the day and the sea, and to the sun belonged all that was on the land. The awning over the terrace was bright in its bravery of red and white stripes, and through it the sunlight was subtly diffused over their faces, it was as though the awning extracted the scent from the sun and sprinkled it over the company below. Good-looking people....
George Tarlyon, at the side of Mrs. Chester, who was lazy in deliciously silver crêpe de Chine, said nothing which couldn’t be sufficiently answered by her smile. Lois was vaguely reading the Daily Mail (continental edition), which fully reported arrival of self and husband at Lady Tarlyon’s villa in Cimiez, and threw in a photograph of Virginia out of sheer exuberance. The companionable little Earl was asleep. Hugo Cypress was talking to Virginia about, of all things, Forestry! And maybe Virginia was gaining much knowledge about Forestry, and maybe she was not, for she seemed to listen with every now and then a quick smile of understanding, but her eyes wandered vaguely about the horizon, and they looked like eyes that suffered from expectation.
3
The villas in the rue Edward VII., so luxurious in every other respect, do not have carriage drives through their gardens to their doors. Cars stop without the little white wooden gates, and the company must needs walk to further luxury, which was a nuisance when it rained, but then it didn’t often rain. A large and dusty car stopped before Lady Tarlyon’s gate this February afternoon; there was luggage behind it, a chauffeur driving it, and a dark man in it—all very dusty. The dark man stepped out, stretched himself, smiled at the driver, and passed through the white wooden gate. It was a quite considerable walk from the gate to the villa, up the narrow path that divided the neglected lawn. And as he was rather cramped from his very long drive, he walked lazily.
He could not see the people on the terrace, under that awning, but they saw him; they stared at him. He had taken the alternative path from the gate, not towards the marble steps, but to the left of the villa, where he could see a door and open French windows.
“Here comes a dark stranger!” cried Mrs. Chester softly.
Lois screwed up her eyes at the figure coming up the path. Lois always screwed up her eyes like that when looking at a distance, because she saw more that way.
“But he’s not such a stranger as all that, either!” she cried. How many years was it since she had seen Ivor Marlay? And Virginia had told no one he was coming to the villa—typical of Virginia, that!