“But it comes out of Russia, I suppose,” said Lady Sellingworth. “Poor, wonderful, horrible, glorious Russia!”
“Forgive me for a moment,” said Braybrooke. “Lady Wrackley seems to want me.”
Indeed, the electric-light smile was being turned on and off in the box opposite with unmistakable intention, and, glancing across, Craven noticed that the young men had disappeared, no doubt to smoke cigarettes in the foyer. Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde were alone, and, seeing them alone, it was easier to Craven to compare their appearance with Lady Sellingworth’s.
Lady Wrackley looked shiningly artificial, seemed to glisten with artificiality, and her certainly remarkable figure suggested to him an advertisement for a corset designed by a genius with a view to the concealment of fat. Mrs. Ackroyde was far less artificial, and though her hair was dyed it did not proclaim the fact blatantly. Certainly it was difficult to believe that both those ladies, whom Braybrooke now joined, were much the same age as Lady Sellingworth. And yet, in Craven’s opinion, to-night she made them both look ordinary, undistinguished. There was something magnificent in her appearance which they utterly lacked.
Braybrooke sat down in their box, and Craven was sure they were all talking about Lady Sellingworth and him. He saw Braybrooke’s broad-fingered hand go to his beard and was almost positive his old friend was on the defensive. He was surely saying, “No, really, I don’t think so! I feel convinced there is nothing in it!” Craven’s eyes met Lady Sellingworth’s, and it seemed to him at that moment that she and he spoke together without the knowledge of Miss Van Tuyn. But immediately, and as if to get away from their strange and occult privacy, she said:
“What have you been doing lately, Beryl? I hear Miss Cronin has come over. But I thought you were not staying long. Have you changed your mind?”
Miss Van Tuyn said she might stay on for some time, and explained that she was having lessons in painting.
“In London! I didn’t know you painted, and surely the best school of painting is in Paris.”
“I don’t paint, dearest. But one can take lessons in an art without actually practising the art. And that is what I am doing. I like to know even though I cannot, or don’t want to, do. Dick Garstin is my master. He has given me the run of his studio in Glebe Place.”
“And you watch him at work?” said Craven.