“One’s husband,” she said slowly. “Perhaps he’s different. He—he ought to be different.”
A faint suggestion of terror came into her large brown eyes.
“There’s a strong tie, you know, whatever people may say, a very strong tie in marriage,” she murmured, as if she were thinking out something for herself. “Fritz ought to love me, even if—if—”
She broke off and looked about the room. Robin Pierce glanced round too over the chattering guests sitting or standing in easy or lazy postures, smiling vaguely, or looking grave and indifferent. Mrs. Wolfstein was laughing, and yawned suddenly in the midst of her mirth. Lady Cardington said something apparently tragic, to Mr. Bry, who was polishing his eyeglass and pouting out his dewy lips. Sir Donald Ulford, wandering round the walls, was examining the pictures upon them. Lady Manby, a woman with a pyramid of brown hair and an aggressively flat back, was telling a story. Evidently it was a comic history of disaster. Her gestures were full of deliberate exaggeration, and she appeared to be impersonating by turns two or three different people, each of whom had a perfectly ridiculous personality. Lord Holme burst into a roar of laughter. His big bass voice vibrated through the room. Suddenly Lady Holme laughed too.
“Why are you laughing?” Robin Pierce asked rather harshly. “You didn’t hear what Lady Manby said.”
“No, but Fritz is so infectious. I believe there are laughter microbes. What a noise he makes! It’s really a scandal.”
And she laughed again joyously.
“You don’t know much about women if you think any story of Lady Manby’s is necessary, to prompt my mirth. Poor dear old Fritz is quite enough. There he goes again!”
Robin Pierce began to look stiff with constraint, and just then Sir Donald Ulford, in his progress round the walls, reached the sofa where they were sitting.
“You are very fortunate to possess this Cuyp, Lady Holme,” he said in a voice from which all resonance had long ago departed.