“You will find,” she said, “as many bathrooms as you’ll need, scattered about the first floor. And then tea on the terrace.... It was nice of you to come, I do think,” she added in a quick breath.
He went indoors swiftly, without looking at her. Shy, she thought. It pleased her that he was shy, for he had seemed rather inhuman ... long ago.
She lingered on her way back to her guests. She took a cigarette from her little case, which to-day was of lapis lazuli. Virginia had many cigarette-cases, small ones, they had somehow come her way: of gold, of platinum, of jade, of tortoise-shell, of crystal, of onyx, and little boxes of worked silver that had once been snuff-boxes, but she nearly always used this one of lapis lazuli, for she liked lapis lazuli. She confined herself to five cigarettes a day, but to-day, somehow, she was smoking more.
“What have you done with the dark young man?” Ann Chester asked her as she rejoined them.
“He’s preparing himself for you, Ann,” Virginia answered rather shortly. Lois glanced at her. A servant came out, wheeling a tea-table through one of the windows.
“You are a divine hostess, Virginia,” said Johnny suddenly. He had not said anything for a long time. “You are the only hostess I know who ever gives one tea at tea-time. They generally offer you a wretched little cup at about a quarter to six, when it tastes like a warm cocktail.... Would you like me to go on about this, Lois, or shall I shut up now?”
When people said that Lois and Johnny were very happy together, other people exclaimed, “Well, who couldn’t be happy with Johnny?”
CHAPTER VII
1
At the last moment only George Tarlyon, Mrs. Chester, and Hugo Cypress motored to Monte Carlo. Major Cypress, authority on Forestry as he was, was even more of an authority on all varieties of “dicing”—under which name, in this particular set, went every game of hazard—and could always be counted on to go towards a Casino. He was the author of an unwritten play called Limejuice Nights, an unwritten romance called The Profligacy of a Pork Butcher, and of that splendid marching song of the Grenadine Guards, which begins:—