She shrugged and leaned back on the blue cushions. “Horrible! But the theatre district in London’s worse, really. The Walling’ll be on a side street, won’t it? I’d loathe seeing Walling in electric bulbs along here. Be rather as though you were running about naked. Did I write you about Ronny Dufford’s new play? Been a most tremendous success. You should bring it over. That’s the Astor, isn’t it? What colour’s the Walling to be inside? Blue? Rather dark blue? And swear to me that you won’t have Russian decorations!”
“I swear, daughter.”
“You old saint,” said Margot, “and you’re still the best looking man in the known world!”
Her lips had a curious, untinted brilliance as though the blood might burst from them. Dizzy Mark told himself that she wasn’t the most beautiful of women. Her brown face was like his face and her father’s face, too flat. Her hands weren’t small, either, but she wore no rings. Her gown was dark and her tam o’shanter of black velvet was inseparable from her hair in the mist of his eyes. Silver buckles swayed and twinkled when her gleaming feet moved about his house and she smiled in a veil of cigarette smoke.
“You’ve simply natural good taste, dad. Born, not made. Don’t think I’m keen on that Venice glass in the dining room. Too heavy. Where does Gurdy sleep?—I snore, you know?”
“I don’t believe it. He sleeps on the top floor where the old playroom was.”
She threw her head back to laugh and said, “Where he used to make such sickening noises on the piano when he thought you were petting me too much? He’s a dear. It wouldn’t be eugenics for me to marry him, would it?”
“See that, Mark?” Carlson squealed, “She ain’t been ten minutes in the country and she’s huntin’ a husband? That’s gratitude!”
“Oh, you,” said Margot, spinning on a heel, “If you were ninety seven years younger I’d marry you myself.”
She teased the old man relentlessly. She teased Mark before his guests at the first luncheon. Her variations appalled the man. She seemed to know all the printable gossip of New York. She spoke to older women with a charming patience, played absurd English songs to amuse Mark’s pet critic and got the smallest of the managers in a loud good temper by agreeing with his debatable views on stage lighting. Most of these, his friends, had forgotten that she was Mark’s niece. Their compliments were made as on a daughter. He felt the swift spread of a ripple; editors of fashion monthlies telephoned to ask for photographs; the chief of a Sunday supplement wanted her views on the American Red Cross; a portrait painter came calling.