Bertie would be home early. She had been lazy and not gone to the ship to meet him. He was coming to breakfast, the fires were smouldering in the sitting-room, the new housemaid reasonably desirous of "gaus." Esmé, in her prettiest wrapper, shivered and grew irritable. She had ordered an elaborate breakfast, but the new cook was a failure; the fish was sodden, the bacon half raw, the hot bread mere heated bakers' scones.
Esmé recalled the breakfasts at Coombe Regis, at Harlands. She flung out at the maids. Ordered new dishes angrily. Oh, it was hateful not to have things right. Her old gaiety had left her. She would have laughed a year ago and boiled eggs on a spirit lamp. Bertie at last, running up, catching her in his arms, holding her close.
"Esmé, my dear old butterfly. My sweetheart. Oh, it's good to be back again here with you. Breakfast, Es, I'm starving."
So big and boyish and loving. She clung to him and found discontent even there. She had cheated her man. There was a secret to be hidden from him for ever. And where were all the comforts she had dreamt of with her income? Where were they?
"Breakfast." Esmé rang the bell.
"Cook is grilling the bacon, mem. It will take ten minutes." So Bertie had to wait, and then eat cold eggs and burnt bacon, and drink stewed tea. But he was happy.
"Extravagance," he said. "My silken-winged butterfly, that's a new gown of fluff and laces."
"You don't expect me to have all last year's, do you?" Esmé almost snapped, then leant against him. He held her closely, loving the warm suppleness of her body, the scent of her burnished hair, his lips were hot on the satin smoothness of her skin.
"But, Es sweetheart, you're thinner," he whispered, "and looking sadly. We'll have a week away, just you and I, in Paris. You must be rich now with no house all this winter."
Esmé slipped away from him and fidgeted as she lighted a cigarette.