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So the three girls were by themselves in the comfortable, elegant, well-lighted drawing-room; and, like many similarly situated young ladies, they did not exactly know what to do to while away the time until the tea-hour. The elder two had been at a dancing-party the night before, and were listless and sleepy in consequence.
No definite hours were kept; no fixed obligations existed: night and day flowed into one another in a blur of confused and retarded engagements, so that one had the impression of lunching at the tea-hour, while dinner was often merged in the noisy after-theatre supper which prolonged Mrs. Hatch's vigil till daylight.
After she had sung as long as she dared, she practiced some accompaniments till her fingers tired, and then she took up a magazine and read a couple of stories, becoming so absorbed in the last one that she hardly heard a clock below striking loudly, though some sense of its strident tones made her start from her chair in dismay lest she should have missed the tea-hour.
She was following Ameerah because, during the afternoon tea-hour in the servants' hall, she had caught a sentence or so in the midst of a gossiping story, which had made her feel that she should be unhappy if she did not go down the walk and to the water-side, see the water, the boat, the steps, everything.
The sense of these doubts was uppermost when, late one afternoon, she was surprised by a visit from Lawrence Selden. He found her alone in the wilderness of pink damask, for in Mrs. Hatch's world the tea-hour was not dedicated to social rites, and the lady was in the hands of her masseuse.
The hall clock sounded again, this time heard clearly through the open door, and Patricia was astonished to find that the tea-hour had arrived without her knowing it. "Am I all right to go down just as I am?" she inquired rather anxiously of her new friend. "Ought I put on a hat or something?" "Put on anything you please.
The road, the wide terrace beyond, the seats, the eternal sea beyond that, the lighted lamps now flaring in the October night-wind, with the few dispersed people abroad at the tea-hour; these things, meeting and melting into the firelit hospitality at his elbow or was it that portentous amenity that melted into them? seemed to form round him and to put before him, all together, the strangest of circles and the newest of experiences, in which the unforgettable and the unimaginable were confoundingly mixed.
The hotel and the café of the Grand Alliance was London's newest rendezvous. Its great palm-court was crowded at the tea-hour and if, as the mysterious Mr. Beale had hinted, any danger was to be apprehended from Dr. van Heerden, it could not come to her in that most open of public places.
Lowder's reply to Densher's note had been to appoint the tea-hour, five o'clock on Sunday, for his seeing them. Kate had thereafter wired him, without a signature, "Come on Sunday before tea about a quarter of an hour, which will help us"; and he had arrived therefore scrupulously at twenty minutes to five.
That seemed to be a relief to her. "Valeria is here till the day after to-morrow," she said. "She has gone for a walk, and has probably forgotten the tea-hour but I hope you will see her." "I want to find out what her plans are. It would be pleasant to come across one another abroad. I wish you were coming too." "Ah, so do I." "I suppose it's impossible." "Absolutely."
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