"Oh! quiet and eminently respectable. Mostly rich old fogies from the country go there. I thought it would be better to remain in touch with her, you know."
And the Red Widow laughed grimly.
"I've got the table set ready. Come and see it," she urged. And she took him into the adjoining dining-room, a handsome apartment, with carved oak furniture and several old and valuable paintings upon the walls. Upon the circular polished table the plates were set upon small mats in the latest vogue, while both the silver and glass were ancient. Covers were laid for four, the decorations consisting of only two long-stem glasses of pale-pink carnations. Taste and delicacy were displayed everywhere, especially in the antique Georgian plate, with the genuine Queen Anne "montieth" as a centre-piece.
"Will it do?" she asked. "I laid it myself."
"It is perfect! It will impress her with your sense of the artistic, Ena," he declared. "I hope the meal you will give us will be as refined."
"I hope so," she laughed. "In a sense—a certain sense—it will be more so."
He laughed at the hidden meaning contained in that remark. Then he glanced around the room, and recollected the great expense which the preliminaries of that single meal had entailed.
"I've asked her for half-past seven," Mrs. Pollen said, "so you'd better go over and dress, and get here a little late. She'll settle down before you come. Then you can both apologise. Of course, we've not met since that evening at the Carlton."
"Right, I quite understand," he said. "Where is she to sit?"
"There—with her back to the sideboard."