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For Dindie Ackroyde loved to gather a crowd for lunch, and had a sort of physical love of noise and human complications. At the far end of the room there was a section which was raised a few inches above the rest. Here stood two Steinway grand pianos, tail to tail, their dark polished cases shining soberly in the pale light of November.
She leaned with an elbow on the edge of the box and looked vaguely about the house. "I shall insist on a change of seats after the interval!" thought Braybrooke. A few minutes passed. Then the door of the box opposite was opened and Lady Wrackley appeared, followed by Dindie Ackroyde and the two young men who had dined with them.
Mrs. Ackroyde was right in her comment on Miss Van Tuyn. In spite of Craven's acting that night Miss Van Tuyn had thoroughly understood how things really were.
"And did you glean any knowledge of Lady Sellingworth?" he asked. "Oh, yes; quite a good deal. Mrs. Ackroyde showed me a photograph of her as she was about eleven years ago." "A year before the plunge!" "Yes. She looked very handsome in the photograph. Of course, it was tremendously touched up. Still, it gave me a real idea of what she must once have been. But, oh! how she has changed!"
Ackroyde and the young man with the severe eyes waiting outside. "May we come in? Is there room?" said Mrs. Ackroyde. There was plenty of room. "Lena will be happier without us," Mrs. Ackroyde explained, without a smile, and looking calmly at Lady Sellingworth. "If I sit quite at the back here I can smoke a cigarette without being stopped. Bobbie you might give me a match."
Ackroyde sat down, keeping on her cloak, which was the colour of an Indian sky at night, and immediately became absorbed in the traffic of the stage. It was obvious that she really cared for art, while Lady Wrackley cared about the effect she was creating on the audience. It seemed a long time before she sat down, and let the two young men sit down too.
"Well, I shall die if I don't have a good dinner at once," said Mrs. Ackroyde. "Is that a Doucet frock, Beryl?" "No. Count Kalinsky designed it." "Oh Igor Kalinksy! Adela, we are in Box B. We must have a powwow between the acts." She looked from Lady Sellingworth to Craven and back again.
He was certain that the "old guard" were already beginning to talk of Addie Sellingworth's "new man." He had seen awareness, that strange feminine interest which is more than half hostile, in the eyes of both Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde. Was it impossible, then, in this horrible whispering gallery of London, to have any privacy of the soul?
She turned again to Mrs. Ackroyde. "It must be Zotos. But even he will be in a difficulty with her if she wants to have very much done. She made the mistake of her life when she became an old woman. I remember saying at the time that some day she would repent in dust and ashes and want to get back, and that then it would be too late. How foolish she was!"
And Miss Van Tuyn astonishingly had not resented this plain speaking. Mrs. Ackroyde, of course, had tried to find out something about Nicolas Arabian, but Miss Van Tuyn had evaded the not really asked questions, and had treated the whole matter with an almost airy casualness which had belied all that was in her mind.
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