talkative entrance, with the butler close on his back to say that dinner was ready.
"I am so sorry," he said to Lucia, "but I thought Edgar said half-past eight."
Here his eye fell on the clock.
"That won't do," he said. "It would make me a quarter of an hour early, instead of being a quarter of an hour late. Tiresome as it is to be late, it is better than being early."
He broke out into a perfectly natural, boyish laugh, as he shook hands.
"I will try to think of another excuse, if you wish," he said.
Lucia laughed too; there was something extraordinarily attractive in his complete lack of shame.
"Yes, please, I want another excuse," she said. "Try to do better, won't you? Will you take in Mrs. Alderson and deposit yourself between her and me? You know her?"
"Yes, rather. I am in luck."
Lucia devoted herself at first to her right-hand neighbour and talked Strauss with him. Fay Alderson and Lindsay on her other side appeared both to be talking at once, with shouts of laughter, and it was only a sense of duty that kept her from joining them.
"Nine bars of orchestra," said Lord Heron impressively, "and into those nine bars he has put all the odour of the East. It has been a hot day, and the air is full of the fatigue of its hours. Then the curtain goes up on the courtyard of Herod's palace. There is the green tank behind, the young Syrian and the page of Herodias are talking together. The short tragic phrases fall drop by bitter drop like blood, hot and corrosive."
"How wonderful!" said Lucia absently, for from the other side came the most enchanting fragments.
"So she put the peacock in the cupboard, don't you remember?" said Fay Alderson; and Charlie's laugh showed that he did.
Elsewhere, too, round the table everyone seemed to be full of laughter, all except Edgar, who was saying something about the photographic instantaneousness of Japanese art to Lady Heron, who did not know a picture from a statue. But for some reason, which Lucia did not yet grasp, being still new to London, Lady Heron "mattered." She was a tall, handsome, grey-headed woman, who had both a past and a present. She had not in the least lived her past down; she took it about with her still, like a
