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Dindie Ackroyde called him "Something Arabian." Lady Sellingworth's mind supplied the other name. It was Nicolas. Beryl had described him as "a living bronze." She had gone out to tea with him in a flat on the day her father's sudden death had been announced in the papers. And yet she had pretended that she was hovering on the verge of love for Alick Craven.
He seemed entirely unlike the man who had talked so enthusiastically in her drawing-room after the dinner in the Bella Napoli, and again on that second evening when they had dined together without the company of Beryl Van Tuyn. But Dindie Ackroyde had said he had come down that day because he had been told he would meet her. And Dindie was scarcely ever wrong abut people.
Short, very handsome, always in perfect health, with brows and eyes which somehow suggested a wild creature, she had an honest and quite unaffected face. Her manner was bold and direct. There was something lasting some said everlasting in her atmosphere. "I cannot conceive of London without Dindie Ackroyde," said Braybrooke, as Mrs.
There was really a link of sympathy between them. And he had been angry because she had gone abroad without telling him. She thought of his anger and loved it. That day, after tea, while the music was still going on in Dindie Ackroyde's drawing-room, they drove back to London together, leaving their reputations quite comfortably behind them in the hand of the "old guard."
But these visits, and especially Dindie Ackroyde's, had deepened the nervous pre-occupation which was beginning seriously to alarm old Fanny. If she took old Fanny's advice and left London? If she returned to Paris? She believed, indeed she felt certain, that to do that would not be to separate from Arabian. He would follow her there.
Glancing about her while she still spoke to Dindie Ackroyde carelessly, Lady Sellingworth saw young Leving; Sir Robert Syng; the Duchess of Wellingborough, shaking her broad shoulders and tossing up her big chin as she laughed at some joke; Jennie Farringdon, with her puffy pale cheeks and parrot-like nose, talking to old Hubert Mostine, the man of innumerable weddings, funerals and charity fetes, with his blinking eyelids and moustaches that drooped over a large and gossiping mouth; Magdalen Dearing, whose Mona Lisa smile had attracted three generations of men, and who had managed to look sad and be riotous for at least four decades; Frances Braybrooke, pulling at his beard; Mrs.
She knew what people were saying of her in London. Although she was in deep mourning and could not go about, several women had been to see her. They had come to condole with her, and had managed to let her understand what people were murmuring. Lady Archie had been with her. Mrs. Birchington had looked in. And two days after Lady Sellingworth's visit to Coombe Dindie Ackroyde had called.
Her nerves were all on edge. She felt irritable, angry, like someone being punished and resenting the punishment. And she felt horribly dull. Her mourning prohibited her from seeking distractions. People were gossiping about her unpleasantly already. She remembered Dindie Ackroyde's warning, and knew she had better heed it.
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.
Shall we take a little walk in the garden? I am so unaccustomed to crowds that I am longing for air." She paused, then added: "And a little quiet." "Certainly," he said stiffly. "Does he hate me?" she thought, with a sinking of despair. He went to fetch her wrap. They met in the hall. "Where are you two going?" Dindie Ackroyde's all-seeing eyes had perceived them.
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