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She looked at him with increasing amazement. "Some time ago yes perhaps. But not now?" "Yes, now. I know it for a fact. They hit it off admirably." Hit it off Traill's very words! Then it was a lie. A lie of Mrs. Durlacher's that day when they were down at Apsley, a lie to win his sympathy at a moment when she had all but lost it.
Durlacher's eyes lost no sight of that and she hurried quickly forwards. "My dear child, how sweet of you!" She kissed her cheek affectionately. "Let me introduce you to my brother." Traill turned and his mind was cast back to the night he had dined with his sister at the restaurant. This was the girl he had noticed; her father was the man who sat on boards in the city.
The poor child pitiably looked once through the door, straining eager ears for the sound of Traill's footsteps; then she closed it and came to the fireplace, taking the first chair that offered. The sense that she had fallen into a trap, notwithstanding all the perfect simulation of Mrs. Durlacher's apparently genuine surprise, swept chillingly through her blood.
Durlacher's lips tightened; but Traill took no notice. He turned to Sally. "Like to lay your hat on the spot where her gracious Majesty was supposed to have rested a weary head, aching with finance?" he asked. Sally smiled. Admiration for him then was intense. Mrs. Durlacher smiled as well; but for one instant, she winced first.
Sally looked piteously about her. The iron teeth of the trap she had seen were surely fast in her now. As yet, she was unable to discern the deeper motive in Mrs. Durlacher's mind in which the proprietorship of Apsley Manor played so vital a part; but she was none the less certain of the designs that were being carried out so effectually to wrest Traill from her side.
Durlacher's car in sight until it passed through the wide portals of a restaurant in the Strand where, from the street, she could see them dismount and pass into the building. They had gone to supper. Traill had told her nothing about that. Then it had only been decided since he had met them; he must be enjoying himself in the society of these very people whose society he professed to abhor.
Durlacher's gesture inviting Traill to sit between them on the back seat; when she saw him willingly accept, notwithstanding that there was more room, more comfort in the seat opposite, she drew in a breath between her teeth, and the nails of her fingers bit into the palms of her hands.
"Then I'll have another cup of tea with you." From that moment, and Mrs. Durlacher's heart had leaped with exultation, she began to play for his humour, baiting the line that she cast with those little turns of phrase, those little feathers of speech which she knew would tempt him to rise to the surface of his mood.
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