"Oh, Wallace, do forget for once that you are trying to be a playwright. Forget the shop." Mrs. Wilstead was irritable. "I do wish she would join us," looking about her nervously, "I want to go home. Is she utterly careless?"
"Only absorbed," returned Martin calmly. "Didn't you hear her ask him before they left the room, to come and look at the picture gallery where he is to paint her portrait? She wanted him to judge of the lighting—a night like this. I thought I saw the flutter of her white gown in the garden yonder a bit ago."
"Oh do, for goodness sake, change the subject," said Alice Wilstead hurriedly. "I am sure Cresswell must think it queer the way we are all sitting out here with our heads together, in the teeth of that approaching storm."
"Not at all," Martin reassured her. "Don't you see that Maud is doing her duty heroically? Maud isn't the wife's confidante and dearest friend for nothing."
"Isn't it perfectly wonderful about Maud?" commented Mrs. Hewston. "You all know what a plain, angular creature she was, nothing really to recommend her but her music and she always spoiled that by playing with her shoulder blades."
"She's an extremely stunning woman," said Wallace Martin shortly.
"And all due to Dita Hepworth," announced Mrs. Wilstead. "Wonderful! I never saw a woman with such a genius for dress and decoration. If her beauty wasn't such an obvious quality, I should think it was due to her almost uncanny knowledge of what is becoming and—Ah, thank Heaven, here she is!"