“To create an illusion?”
“Who knows?”
She looked down the long room. Between the heads of innumerable men and women she could see Miss Schley. Her husband was hidden. She would have preferred to see him. Miss Schley’s head was by no means expressive of the naked truth. It merely looked cool, self-possessed, and—so Lady Holme said to herself—extremely American. What she meant by that she could, perhaps, hardly have explained.
“Do you admire Miss Schley’s appearance?”
Robin Pierce spoke again with a touch of humorous malice. He knew Lady Holme so well that he had no objection to seem wanting in tact to her when he had a secret end to gain. She looked at him sharply; leaning forward over the table and opening her eyes very wide.
“Why are you forgetting your manners to-night and bombarding me with questions?”
“The usual reason—devouring curiosity.”
She hesitated, looking at him. Then suddenly her face changed. Something, some imp of adorable frankness, peeped out of it at him, and her whole body seemed confiding.
“Miss Schley is going about London imitating me. Now, isn’t that true? Isn’t she?”
“I believe she is. Damned impertinence!”