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Lucas said that there was a plot between them, but that he would consent to learn at once if Laurencine would play the piano for him after dinner. Laurencine said she didn't play. Lucas said she did. M. Defourcambault, invoked once again, said that she played magnificently. Laurencine blushed, and asked M. Defourcambault how he could!... And so on, indefinitely.
You could see them sitting happily with their fathers and mothers and cousins and uncles and aunts, savouring the spectacle from dim stalls and boxes in the most perfect respectability. Laurencine leaning her elbows on the ledge of the box, watched with eager, parted lips, and never showed the slightest sign of uneasiness. George was uneasy; he was distressed.
Lois and George walked cautiously across the dusty, dulled parquets into the vast drawing-room. George doffed his hat. "I'd better draw the blinds up," he suggested. "No, no!" she sharply commanded. "I can see quite well. I don't want any more light." There was the piano upon which Laurencine had played! The embrasure of the window!
"However, my wife and I have met this Mr. Lucas, and as our opinion about him is not wholly unfavourable, the matter was satisfactorily and quickly arranged even before I had had my bath; Laurencine and I will spend the afternoon in writing suitable communications to Mr. Lucas. I am ready to show her mine for a shilling, but I doubt if five pounds would procure me a sight of hers.
It was not until after the others were seated for the meal that Laurencine made her appearance. She was a magnificent and handsome virgin, big-boned, physically a little awkward, candid. How exquisitely and absurdly she flushed in shaking hands with George! With what a delicious mock-furious setting of the teeth and tossing of the head she frowned at her mother's reproaches for being late!
The Gay Spark gave Lucas away entirely; it gave away his method of existence. "I don't believe you like it," said sharp Laurencine. "I adore it," George protested. "Don't you?" "Oh! I do, of course," said Laurencine. "I knew I should." Lucas, instinctively on the defence, said: "The second act's much better than the first." George's hopes, dashed but not broken, recovered somewhat.
Lucas spoke coldly, with a careful indifference. George, to whom insight had not been denied, understood that Everard did not altogether care for Laurencine to be referred to as a little thing, that he had rendered Laurencine sacred by his secret approval.
"It isn't," Laurencine contradicted. "I may as well tell you I've written all I mean to write in the way of letters for one day. But I don't want to go, really, Lois darling." "No. She wants to think," Mrs. Ingram explained. Lois set her lips together, and then glimpsed herself in the large mirror over the anthracite stove. She looked too rich and complicated for that simple drawing-room.
Laurencine was a far more comprehensible offspring for them. The dining-room was even less spacious than the drawing-room, and as unpretentious. The furniture everywhere was sparse, but there were one or two rich knick-knacks, and an abundance of signed photographs. The few pictures, too, were signed, and they drew attention.
He did not understand her glance. He could not settle the first question about her her age. She might be very wicked; certainly she could be very ruthless. And he had no hold over her. He could give her nothing that she wanted. He doubted whether any man could. "Have you been in London long?" he asked Laurencine. "A week," she said. "I came over with Miss Wheeler.
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