"Ah! Northamptonshire and Leicestershire are the centre of fox-hunting, are they not?" said the Scotch woman, addressing Mr. Davidson.
"Yes. We have several packs within easy reach, though Welsford, where we live, is, strictly speaking, in the Fitzwilliam country. I love hunting," he added.
"My husband even goes cubbing at four o'clock in the morning sometimes," laughed Mrs. Davidson.
"Ah! He is evidently an enthusiast!" Mrs. Morrison agreed. "My husband was a fisherman, and I confess I had to go with him on some very dull expeditions in the north of Scotland and in Ireland."
"That's the worst of men," Lilla declared. "If they take up hunting, fishing, or golf, it becomes an obsession. They talk of nothing else."
And so the chatter about hunting and hunting men continued, apparently to the intense amusement of Ena Pollen—or "Mrs. Morrison" as she was known to the Manchester solicitor and the doctors who had pronounced her life to be a "first-class" one.
The orchestra was playing one of the latest waltzes, and the big restaurant was filled with chatter and laughter. Surely none who sat there that night and noticed the three ladies and their male companion as they drank their champagne, and ate that supper dish of the London restaurants, mousse de jambon served from the ice, would ever have dreamed that a most diabolical plot was in progress, a conspiracy the most subtle and fiendish that the evil mind of man could ever devise.
Ena Pollen was, of course, the life and soul of the party. Very handsome, with her auburn hair and her bizarre dress, she was regarded by half the people in the restaurant. Some of them knew her by sight as a regular habituée of the smart restaurants and dance-clubs, for it was part of the great game which the heartless trio was playing for her to be remarked and regarded as a woman of outstanding grace and beauty.
Men courted her society, and in more than one instance—if the truth be whispered—had been hurried to the grave in consequence.
The quartette, after a delightful meal, took their coffee and Cointreau at a little table set beneath a palm out in the hall. Mrs. Morrison had become as charmed with Mrs. Davidson as she had been with Ena Pollen.