For a moment her mouth went sullen as she looked at the slim figure, with its narrow stooping shoulders, that stood before her, then she rose languidly.
He piloted her through the crush to the buffet in the billiards-room. An obsequious waiter proffered two glasses; they might have held a fair-sized cocktail, but they were not Simon’s idea of glasses for champagne. He waved them aside quickly with one word — “tumblers!”
Two small tumblers were produced and filled by the waiter. As Simon handed one to Madame Valeria Petrovna Karkoff she smiled approval.
“They are meeserable — those little glasses for champagne, no good at all — all the same you are, ’ow do you say? ‘You are a one, ’ees it not? Chin-chin!”
Simon laughed, they finished another tumbler apiece before they left the billiards-room. “Come on,” he said. “I think Maliperi is going to sing.”
“Maliperi?” she exclaimed, opening wide her eyes. “Come then, why do we stay ’ere?” and gripping him impulsively by the hand she ran him down the long passage to the music-room at the back of the house.
They stood together in a corner while Maliperi sang, and marvelled at her art, although the magnificent voice that had filled so many opera houses was too great for the moderate-sized room, and a certain portion of its beauty lost.
“Let us ’ave more champagne,” said Valeria Petrovna, when it was over. “I feel I will enjoy myself tonight.”
Simon led the way back to the buffet, and very shortly two more tumblers stood before them. As they were about to drink, a big red-headed man put his hand familiarly on her shoulder, and spoke thickly, in what Simon could only imagine to be Russian.
She shook his hand off with an impatient gesture, and answered him sharply in the same tongue.