“I don't know.”
“Am I quite wrong, then?” she asked, looking him in the eyes.
And Plank, who never lied, found no answer. Considering him for a moment in silence, she turned again and descended the stairs.
The dinner was one of those thoroughly well-chosen dinners of few courses and faultless service suitable for card-players, who neither care to stuff themselves as a preliminary to a battle royal, nor to dawdle through courses, eliminating for themselves what is not good for them. The men drank a light, sound, aromatic Irish of the major's; the women—except Marion, who took what the men took—used claret sparingly. Coffee was served where they sat; the men smoking, Agatha and Marion producing their own cigarettes.
“Don't you smoke any more?” asked Grace Ferrall of Leila Mortimer, and at the smiling negative, “Oh, that perhaps explains it. You're growing positively radiant, you know. You'll he wearing a braid and a tuck in your skirt if you go on getting younger.”
Leila laughed, colouring up as Plank turned in his chair to look at her closer.
“No, it won't rub off, Mr. Plank,” said Marion coolly, “but mine will. This,” touching a faint spot of colour under her eyes, “is art.”
“Pooh! I'm all art!” said Grace. “Observe, Mr. Plank, that under this becoming flush are the same old freckles you saw at Shotover.” And she laughed that sweet, careless laugh of an adolescent and straightened her boyish figure, pretty head held high, adding: “Kemp won't let me 'improve' myself, or I'd do it.”
“You are perfect,” said Sylvia, rising from the table, her own lovely, rounded, youthful figure condoning the exaggeration; “you're sufficiently sweet as you are. Good people, if you are ready, we will go through the ceremony of cutting for partners—unless otherwise you decide. How say you?”
“I don't care to enter the scramble for a man,” cried Grace. “If it's to choose, I'd as soon choose Marion.”