"Dear old Es," he said affectionately, but not passionately. "Dear old butterfly, it's nice to have my girlie loving again; but we'll be late for dinner if we don't dress quickly. Es, call your maid."
Esmé rang listlessly; she hardly knew what she wanted, save that it was something which would wipe away her bitter thoughts.
Through dinner she was recklessly merry, witty in her flashing way; brilliantly, a little haggardly, pretty. The patches of pink were more pronounced on her cheeks, her powder thicker.
Then, driving home in the cool, she remembered Sybil Chauntsey. Here was another woman about to make a mistake, to realize too late, as she had done, that money cannot repay peace of mind. Deep, too, in Esmé's mind, was a horror of sinning. She was instinctively pure herself; her ideas set deeply in a bed of conventionality. A girl of Sybil's type would suffer all her life if she once slipped, perhaps afterwards grow completely reckless, look on her one sin as so deadly that a host of others could matter little, and might drown thought.
Esmé forgot Sybil until Sunday morning. Angy Beerhaven had proved himself in earnest, had almost insisted on a trip in his new car. "Bring anyone—your husband and a friend," he said.
Esmé had agreed heartily. There was Estelle; she would like the drive. As the huge cream-coloured Daimler hummed softly at her door, Angy asked where they would go to.
"The sea would be lovely to-day," he said. "Or there are the Downs or the Forest."
"The sea!" Esmé shot out swiftly. "The sea!" she said.
"Then Brighton. It's a nice run; there are decent hotels. One only gets cold beef and cutlets in heaps of places."
"Brighton let it be," she said carelessly.