“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I may not like opium.”
“But if you do—and I know you will?”
“Why,” said Rita, glancing rapidly at Pyne, “I suppose it would be a novel experience.”
“Let me arrange it for you,” came the harsh voice of Mrs. Sin. “Lucy will drive you both down—won’t you, my dear?” The shadowed eyes glanced aside at Sir Lucien Pyne.
“Certainly,” he replied. “I am always at the ladies’ service.”
Rita Dresden settled herself luxuriously into a nest of silk and fur in another corner of the room, regarding the baronet coquettishly through her half-lowered lashes.
“I won’t go unless it is my party, Lucy,” she said. “You must let me pay.”
“A detail,” murmured Pyne, crossing and standing beside her.
Interest now became centred upon the preparations being made by Mrs. Sin. From the attaché case she took out a lacquered box, silken-lined like a jewel-casket. It contained four singular-looking pipes, the parts of which she began to fit together. The first and largest of these had a thick bamboo stem, an amber mouthpiece, and a tiny, disproportionate bowl of brass. The second was much smaller and was of some dark, highly-polished wood, mounted with silver conceived in an ornate Chinese design representing a long-tailed lizard. The mouthpiece was of jade. The third and fourth pipes were yet smaller, a perfectly matched pair in figured ivory of exquisite workmanship, delicately gold-mounted.
“These for the ladies,” said Mrs. Sin, holding up the pair. “You”—glancing at Kilfane—“have got your own pipe, I know.”