Part 77 (2/2)

Nevertheless she put a little more red on her lips, called her maid, had something done to her hair.

”It has been a great success!” said the little Frenchwoman. ”Miladi looks wonderful to-day. Black and white is much better than unrelieved black for miladi. And the _soupcon_ of blue on the hat and in the earrings of miladi lights up the whole personality. Miladi never did a wiser thing than when she visited Switzerland.”

”You think not, Cecile?”

”Indeed yes, miladi. There is no specialist even in Paris like Monsieur Paulus. And as to the Doctor Lavallois, he is a marvel. Every woman who is no longer a girl should go to him.”

Lady Sellingworth picked up a big m.u.f.f and went down to the motor, leaving Cecile smiling behind her. As she disappeared down the stairs Cecile, who was on the bright side of thirty, with a smooth, clear skin and chestnut-coloured hair, pushed out her under-lip slowly and shook her head.

”_La vieillesse!_” she murmured. ”_La vieillesse amoureuse! Quelle horreur!_”

Lady Sellingworth had never given the maid any confidence about her secret reasons for doing this or that. But Cecile was a Parisian. She fully understood the reason for their visit to Geneva. Miladi had fallen in love.

Lady Sellingworth's excitement increased as she drove towards Coombe.

It was complicated by a feeling of shyness. To herself she said that she was like an old debutante. She had been out of the world for so long, and now she was venturing once more among the merciless women of the world that never rests from amusing itself, from watching the lives of others, from gossiping about them, from laughing at them. She had been a leader of this world until she had denied it, had shut herself away from it. And now she was venturing back--because of a man. As she drove on swiftly through the wintry and dull-looking streets, streets that seemed to grow meaner, more dingy, more joyless, as she drew near to the outskirts of London, she looked back over the past. And she saw always the same reason for the important actions of her life. All of them had been committed because of a man. And now, even at sixty--Presently she saw by the look of the landscape that she was nearing Coombe, and she drew a little mirror out of her m.u.f.f and gazed into it anxiously.

”What will they say? What will he think? What will happen to me to-day?”

The car turned into a big gravel sweep between tall, red-brick walls, and drew up before Mrs. Ackroyde's door.

In the long drawing-room, with its four windows opening on to a terrace, from which Coombe Woods could be seen sunk in the misty winter, Lady Sellingworth found many cheerful people whom she knew. Mrs. Ackroyde gave her blunt, but kindly, greeting, with her strange eyes, fierce and remote, yet notably honest, taking in at a glance the results of Geneva.

Lady Wrackley was there in an astonis.h.i.+ng black hat trimmed with bird of paradise plumes. Glancing about her while she still spoke to Dindie Ackroyde carelessly, Lady Sellingworth saw young Leving; Sir Robert Syng; the d.u.c.h.ess 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; Francis Braybrooke, pulling at his beard; Mrs. Birchington; Lady Anne Smith, wiry, c.o.c.k-nosed, brown, ugly, but supremely smart and self-a.s.sured; Eve Colton, painted like a wall, and leaning, with an old hand blazing with jewels, on a stick with a jade handle; Mrs. Dews, the witty actress, with her white, mobile face, and the large irresponsible eyes which laughed at herself, the critics and the world; Lord Alfred Craydon, thin, high church and political, who loved pretty women but receded farther and farther from marriage as the years spun by; and Lady Twickenham, a French _poupee_; and Julian Lamberhurst, the composer, who looked as if he had grown up to his six foot four in one night, like the mustard seed; and Hilary Lane, the friend of poets; and--how many more! 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 s.h.i.+ning soberly in the pale light of November. There were some deep settees on this species of dais, and, looking towards it, over the heads of the crowd in the lower part of the room, Lady Sellingworth saw Craven again.

He was sitting beside a pretty girl, whom Lady Sellingworth did not know, and talking. His face looked hard and bored, but he was leaning towards the girl as if trying to seem engrossed, intent, on the conversation and on her.

Francis Braybrooke came up. Lady Sellingworth was busy, greeting and being greeted. Once more she made part of the regiment. But the ranks were broken. There was no review order here. Only for an instant had she been aware of formality, of the ”eyes right” atmosphere--when she had entered the room. Then the old voices hummed about her. And she saw the well-known and experienced eyes examining her. And she had to listen and to answer, to be charming, to ”hold her own.”

”I'm putting Alick Craven next to you at lunch, Adela. I know you and he are pals. He's over there with Lily Bright.”

”And who is Lily Bright?” said Lady Sellingworth in her most offhand way.

”A dear little New Englander, Knickerbocker to the bone.”

She turned away composedly to meet another guest.

Francis Braybrooke began to talk to Lady Sellingworth, and almost immediately Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Birchington joined them.

”How marvellous you look, Adela!” said Lady Wrackley, staring with her birdlike eyes. ”You will cut us all out. I must go to Geneva. Have you heard about Beryl? But of course you have. She was so delighted at coming into a fortune that she rushed away to Rose Tree Gardens to celebrate the event with a man without even waiting till she had got her mourning. Didn't she, Minnie?”

Francis Braybrooke was looking shocked.

”I cannot believe that Miss Van Tuyn--” he began.

But Mrs. Birchington interrupted him.

”But I was there!” she said.

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