"It's about a bazaar, Esmé. I want someone to help me to get one up for that new little hospital. Denise Blakeney would help Susie Handelle. We'd run it, you and I."
Through an elaborate, expensive lunch old Colonel Carteret was almost silent. The vol au vent of truffled chicken had given way for forced fruit before Estelle got him to talk to her. He thawed before her gentle voice, a shy, troubled old man, numbed still by his loss. His boys had been his all. He could not realize that they had left him. He had saved, planned, improved for Cyril and George; now mechanically, because the places were there, he carried it on. He had seen very little of Esmé; until his boys' deaths he had been wrapped up in them, never mixing in Society. Now he looked at the expensive flowers in Venetian glasses; he tasted elaborate made dishes, forced fruits, ices, and once or twice he shook his head as if at some inward thoughts.
Dollie Gresham chattered of her bazaar. It was just the time for one, they would start it at once. Restlessly energetic, she went to the telephone after luncheon, rang up Denise Blakeney.
"Yes, Denise will help sell. Only think, Esmé"—this after a long pause—"Sir Cyril's given her another car, and that diamond pendant of old Lady Gilby's, you know, the one he was selling. Since that boy came"—Dollie hung up the receiver—"Denise gets all she wants, and a great deal more. She is simply, tiresomely happy, adores dear Cyril, and has a convenient memory for the past. Tiens, such is life."
Esmé's face was set, sullen, as she listened. Denise had everything. Denise was not generous; there were so many things which she could have given, yet the very tie between the two women seemed to destroy their old friendship.
In the flower-decked, richly-furnished little drawing-room old Hugh Carteret talked to Estelle. He looked bewildered, puzzled.
"Bertie told me they were not rich," he said. "Yet the place seems to me to be almost too luxurious, that they lack nothing."
"I think"—Estelle fidgeted a little, her grey eyes distressed—"that Esmé is very young, that she perhaps grasps at things, so to speak, perhaps spends a little more than she ought to."
"I am a judge of wines." Hugh Carteret nodded. "The hock was one of the best, the old brandy cost fourteen or fifteen shillings a bottle, the port was vintage. I tasted them all." He shook his head again.
Esmé, coming in, sat by him, tried every trick she knew of winning glance and smile. But her childish charm had left her; she could only hark back to her poverty, to her want of money, and each half-veiled appeal left the old man silent.