“I love to give the firelight a chance. Didn’t you know that? Come and sit down and tell me what you have been doing. You have quite given up Paris?”
“Yes, for the time. I’ve become engrossed in painting. Dick Garstin has given me the run of his studio. But where have you been?”
As she put the question Miss Van Tuyn looked closely at her friend, and, in spite of the dimness, she noticed a difference in her appearance. The white hair still crowned the beautifully shaped head, but it looked thicker, more alive than formerly. The change which struck her most, however, was in the appearance of the face. It seemed, she thought, markedly younger and fresher, smoother than she remembered it, firmer in texture. Surely some, many even, of the wrinkles had disappeared. And the lips, once so pale and weary, were rosy now—if the light was not deceiving her. The invariable black dress, too, had vanished. Adela wore a lovely gown of a deep violet colour and had a violet band in her hair. She sat very upright. Her tall figure seemed almost braced up. And surely she looked less absolutely natural than usual. There was something—a slight hardness, perhaps, a touch of conscious imperviousness in look and manner, a watchful something—which made Miss Van Tuyn for a moment think of a photograph she had seen on a member of the “old guard’s” table.
The sheaves! The sheaves!
But the girl longed for more light. She knew she was not deceived entirely by the dimness, but she longed for crude revelation. Already her mind was busily at work on the future. She felt, although she had only been in the room for two or three minutes, that the Lady Sellingworth who had just come back to London must presently be her enemy. And she wished to get in the first blow, since blows there would have to be.
“Where have I been?” said Lady Sellingworth. “In the place of the swans—in Geneva.”
“Geneva! We thought you had gone to the Riviera, probably to Cap Martin.”
“I did go to the Riviera first.”
“It must have been a desert.”
“Not quite. Cannes would have been quite pleasant. But I had to go on to Geneva to see a friend.”