The door closed and he looked around him. Early Victorian furniture, bright chintzes, modern china, photo frames, frilled cushions and a quantity of Benares work.
Over the draped chimney-piece a rosewood overmantel obtruded with carved cubicles, enclosing each a simpering statuette. The walls, buff with knots of roses, were dotted with plates, plush brackets and amateurish water colours, but the room was airy and spotlessly clean, with a certain homelike sense of comfort.
The parrot eyed him wickedly, his grey head on one side, and the black cat yawned in his face, red tongue curled, with sleepy disdain.
McTaggart's nervousness increased. Then he heard a brisk step, the door opened and in there came a trim, upright little figure in a blue "foulard" dress.
He gathered his wits and advanced to meet her. "I'm afraid you won't remember me—I must really apologize for coming..."
"Oh, yes, I do——" she cut him short—"quite well"—and held out her hand.
"I met you at my sister-in-law's—Won't you sit down?" He found himself on the chintz-covered sofa facing his hostess.
Clear eyes, grey like Jill's, met his gaze, beneath a fringe, plainly false, of a brownish hue, safely secured by a band of black velvet. Beyond this line her natural hair, pepper and salt, seemed to proclaim, with emphasis, the honesty of the subterfuge and her intentions.
Her nose was sharp, her lips tight, her figure angular and spare, but he noticed she had beautiful hands on which gleamed some fine old rings.
"I was staying there when you lunched one day and took the children for a drive." She seemed to guess that he was nervous and set him at ease with well-bred tact.