CHAPTER IX
It was striking twelve when Bridget and her husband reached home. She pushed open a door on the left of the hall, and touched the button of the electric light. The fire was still smouldering on the hearth. She moved towards it, shivering a little, as she wrapped her cloak closer round her, and drew up an easy chair, into which she sank wearily. Her husband came in a moment later. “Why doesn’t Smithers leave a decent fire?” he asked irritably, kicking the logs together with his heel, till he had stirred them into a blaze.
There was silence. Travers took some whiskey from the spirit stand on the table, and half filled a glass with it.
“Beastly dull evening!” he remarked, taking his cigar-case out of his pocket, and examining its contents.
“I wasn’t bored,” Bridget said, shortly.
“No? You haven’t lost the faculty, my dear,—deliciously fresh, if a trifle bourgeois,—of swearing eternal friendship on an evening’s acquaintance. There is something very piquant about you, Bridget. In the midst of this jaded, effete civilization, you often remind me of the rustic beauty,—the Miller’s, or the Village Innkeeper’s lovely daughter!”
He cut off the end of his cigar with great deliberation as he spoke.
Bridget watched with interest the sharp, direct thrust of the pen-knife. He glanced furtively at her, but her face was apparently unmoved. He could not decide whether the momentary curl of the lip which he fancied he detected was a trick of the firelight.
“This is the first time you have met that man, Carey, of course?” he observed after a moment, in the same lazy, mocking voice.
“No, it is not the first time.”