Susan said, “This is Dennis O’Brien, my husband.” It was very calmly said.
“A surprise!” said Joyce. “Congratulations to both of you, and all that, I suppose. Rather sudden, wasn’t it?”
She failed to shake hands with Dennis O’Brien. As she had told Bertram many times, sometimes amusing times, and sometimes not, she hated all the Irish except half an Irishman.
She sat in Bertram’s low arm chair, yawning a little, with her long white arms behind her bobbed hair.
“A cigarette, Bertram!”
Bertram gave her the cigarette, lit it for her, and mumbled something about the late hour, and bedtime. He had a foreboding that Joyce didn’t intend to go to bed until Susan and Dennis had gone. And Dennis was not going. There would have to be an explanation. There would probably be a row.
It came half an hour later, after strained and unnatural efforts at bright conversation by Bertram and Susan, while O’Brien sat gloomily silent, and Joyce yawned with increasing carelessness, and asked occasional questions without listening to the answer. The crisis happened when she sprang up and stretched her arms above her head.
“Haven’t you people got any home? I hate being inhospitable, Susan, but you and your new-found husband had better go. Bertram and I sometimes sleep o’ nights.”
There was a moment’s silence before Bertram answered:
“O’Brien is staying. He’s going to use the sofa to-night.”