but he declared on nothing but black suits for the next three months. That, I think, was really beautiful.”
The Princess was not impressed.
“I think you must be very self-indulgent and live only for amusement,” she said, “a life of pleasure-seeking and card-playing and dissipation brings only dissatisfaction. You will find that out some day.”
“Oh, I know it turns out that way sometimes,” assented Reginald. “Forbidden fizz is often the sweetest.”
But the remark was wasted on the Princess, who preferred champagne that had at least a suggestion of dissolved barley-sugar.
“I hope you will come and see me again,” she said, in a tone that prevented the hope from becoming too infectious; adding as a happy afterthought, “you must come to stay with us in the country.”
Her particular part of the country was a few hundred versts the other side of Tamboff, with some fifteen miles of agrarian disturbance between her and the nearest neighbour. Reginald felt that there is some privacy which should be sacred from intrusion.
THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANNE
Egbert came into the large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a man who is not certain whether he is entering a dovecote or a bomb factory, and is prepared for either eventuality. The little domestic quarrel over the luncheon-table had not been fought to a definite finish, and the question was how far Lady Anne was in a mood to renew or forgo hostilities. Her pose in the arm-chair by the tea-table was rather elaborately rigid; in the gloom of a December afternoon Egbert’s pince-nez did not materially help him to discern the expression of her face.
By way of breaking whatever ice might be floating on the surface he made a remark about a dim religious light. He or Lady Anne were accustomed to make that remark between 4.30 and 6 on winter and late