“Then you’re blind, old girl. She’s like you if you’d been a chorus-girl and known a lot of things you don’t know.”
“Really. Perhaps she has been a chorus-girl.”
“I’ll bet she has, whether she says so or not.”
He gave a deep chuckle. Lady Holme’s gown rustled as she leaned back in her corner.
“And she’s goin’ to Arkell House. Americans are the very devil for gettin’ on. Laycock was tellin’ me to-night that—”
“I don’t wish to hear Mr. Laycock’s stories, Fritz. They don’t amuse me.”
“Well, p’r’aps they’re hardly the thing for you, Vi. But they’re deuced amusin’ for all that.”
He chuckled again. Lady Holme felt an intense desire to commit some act of physical violence. She shut her eyes. In a minute she heard her husband once more beginning to hum the refrain about Ina. How utterly careless he was of her desires and requests. There was something animal in his forgetfulness and indifference. She had loved the animal in him. She did love it. Something deep down in her nature answered eagerly to its call. But at moments she hated it almost with fury. She hated it now and longed to use the whip, as the tamer in a menagerie uses it when one of his beasts shows its teeth, or sulkily refuses to perform one of its tricks.
Lord Holme went on calmly humming till the brougham stopped in the long line of carriages that stretched away into the night from the great portico of Arkell House.
People were already going in to supper when the Holmes arrived. The Duke, upon whom a painful malady was beginning to creep, was bravely welcoming his innumerable guests. He found it already impossible to go unaided up and down stairs, and sat in a large armchair close to the ball-room, with one of his pretty daughters near him, talking brightly, and occasionally stealing wistful glances at the dancers, who were visible through a high archway to his left. He was a thin, middle-aged man, with a curious, transparent look in his face—something crystalline that was nearly beautiful.