He turned to Yootha.
“By the way, I have not seen you since the ball,” he said. “And for that matter I didn’t see you at the ball, because I couldn’t identify you. That was a rotten experience you had—perfectly disgraceful to treat you as they did. I hear it made you quite ill, and I am not surprised. I hope that by now you have quite recovered?”
“Thank you,” she answered, and in spite of her effort to speak naturally she could not prevent a certain coldness from betraying itself in her voice.
“Yes, I have recovered—though I don’t think all my friends have!”
“Indeed? I think I don’t follow you.”
“Oh, it’s of no consequence,” she replied, flushing slightly; then she changed the subject.
Jessica was surprisingly genial and friendly when she greeted Yootha and Captain Preston on her houseboat a couple of hours later. Preston had availed himself of her invitation for a reason which he had not yet confided to Yootha, though, had he known it, the same reason had prompted Yootha to ask La Planta if he had lunched.
They knew that in spite of the olive branch now held out by Jessica, at heart Jessica’s dislike of them both had become, if anything, intensified since the affair at the ball, and that her hatred of Cora too had increased. Though not addicted to crediting gossip, so many little remarks of Jessica’s concerning themselves had been repeated to them by different people that they could not turn an entirely deaf ear.
All sorts of well-known people were on Jessica’s houseboat. Some Yootha had met, and to many of the remainder she and Preston were introduced. Indeed so friendly did everybody appear to be that presently she began to feel quite happy and at home—the reverse of what she and Preston had anticipated.
And of all aboard, none made himself more agreeable to Yootha and to Captain Preston than Archie La Planta. If anything, he rather overdid it, for he took the trouble to present several people whom they found extremely boring. They had been aboard perhaps half an hour, when Yootha suddenly heard her name spoken, and, turning, found herself face to face with a dark, very intelligent-looking man approaching middle age.