He longed to talk to her, but his opportunity dragged. To his restlessness it seemed as if the others were trying to keep them apart. There was Gervase, silly fool, going out with the women as usual and sitting beside her in the drawing-room—there was George, sillier fool, keeping the men back in the dining-room while he told Mr. Hurst exactly why he had not gone for an army chaplain. Then directly they had joined the ladies, both Doris and Rose shot up simultaneously from beside Dolly Hurst and disposed of themselves one beside Lady Alard, the other beside Stella. He had to sit down and try again to be intelligent. It was worse than ever, for he was watching all the time for Miss Hurst to empty her coffee-cup—then he would go and put it down on the Sheraton table, which was not so far from Stella, and after that he would sit down beside Stella no matter how aggressively Rose was sitting on her other side.
The coffee-cup was emptied in the middle of a discussion on the relative reputations of Wells and Galsworthy. Peter immediately forgot what he was saying....
“Let me put your cup down for you.”
He did not wait for a reply, but the next minute he was on the other side of the room. He realised that he had been incredibly silly and rude, but it was too late to atone, for Jim Parish, Jenny’s ineligible young man, had sat down in the chair he had left.
Stella was talking to Rose, but she turned round when Peter came up and made room beside her on the sofa. Rose felt annoyed—she thought Stella’s manner was “encouraging,” and began to say something about the sofa being too cramped for three. However, at that moment Lady Alard called her to come and hear about Mrs. Hurst’s experiences in London on Armistice Day, and she had regretfully to leave the two ineligibles together, with the further complication that the third ineligible was sitting beside Dolly Hurst—and though Jim Parish was supposed to be in love with Jenny, everyone knew he was just as much in need of a rich wife as Peter.
“Stella,” said Peter in a low voice—“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry! What for, my dear?”
He realised that of course she did not know what he had been thinking of her that morning.
“Everything,” he mumbled, apologizing vaguely for the future as well as the past.
Stella had thought that perhaps this evening “something would happen.” At Conster—on Christmas night ... the combination seemed imperative. But Peter did not, as she had hoped, draw her out of that crowded, overheated room into some quiet corner of the house or under the cold, dark curtains of the night. Peter could not quite decide against the family—he must give it time to plead. He leaned back on the sofa, his eyes half-closed, tired and silent, yet with a curious peace at his heart.