After dinner they sat in the great drawing-room—a portentous place—with low-hung crystal chandeliers—pale rugs—pale walls—with one corner redeemed from the general chilliness by a fireplace of yellow Italian marble, and a huge screen of peacock feathers in a mahogany frame.
“I call this room the Ice Palace,” Frederick told her. “Mother furnished it in the early eighties—and she would never change it. And now I rather hate to have it different. I warmed this corner with the fireplace and the screen. Edith always sits in the library on the other side of the hall, but Mother and I had our coffee here, and I prefer to continue the old custom.”
Jane’s eyes opened wide. “Don’t you and your niece drink your coffee together?”
“Usually, but there have been times,” he laughed as he said it, “when each of us has sat on opposite sides of the hall in lonely state.”
Jane laughed too. “Baldy and I do things like that.”
“And now,” he said, “we can talk about Edith. I suppose I’ll have to kill the fatted calf. That’s what your brother said.”
“That sounds like Baldy.”
“Does it? Well, he told me the thing that decided her was some friends who came out and saw her in the dining-room. She’s been all the time with Martha, her mother’s old cook, whose husband keeps a country hotel beyond Alexandria. And Adelaide Laramore and Eloise Harper and a couple of men were lunching there. I am sorry it happened. Eloise is a regular town-crier. She’ll tell the world.”
He beat his fist against the arm of his chair. “I hate to have the thing in the papers.”
“It will soon die down,” said Jane, “when she comes home.”