Pat gave an imperceptible start. She was suddenly aware of a feeling which was remarkably like uneasiness. It lurked at the back of her consciousness like a small formless cloud.
"Oh!" she said.
Yes, the feeling was uneasiness. Any other man who at such a moment had said those words she would have suspected of a desire to pique her, to stir her interest by a rather obviously assumed admiration of another. But not John. He was much too honest. If Johnnie said a thing, he meant it.
A quick flicker of concern passed through Pat. She was always candid with herself, and she knew quite well that, though she did not want to marry him, she regarded John as essentially a piece of personal property. If he had fallen in love with her, that was, of course, a pity: but it would, she realized, be considerably more of a pity if he ever fell in love with someone else. A Johnnie gone out of her life and assimilated into that of another girl would leave a frightful gap. The Mustard Spoon was one of those stuffy, overheated places, but, as she meditated upon this possibility, Pat shivered.
"Oh!" she said.
The music stopped. The floor emptied. Mr. Molloy and his daughter returned to the table. Hugo remained up in the gallery, in earnest conversation with his old friend, Mr. Fish.
III
Ronald Overbury Fish was a pink-faced young man of small stature and extraordinary solemnity. He had been at school with Hugo and also at the university. Eton was entitled to point with pride at both of them, and only had itself to blame if it failed to do so. The same remark applies to Trinity College, Cambridge. From earliest days Hugo had always entertained for R. O. Fish an intense and lively admiration, and the thought of being compelled to let his old friend down in this matter of the Hot Spot was doing much to mar an otherwise jovial evening.
"I'm most frightfully sorry, Ronnie, old thing," he said immediately the first greetings were over. "I sounded the aged relative this afternoon about that business, and there's nothing doing."