husband, scent much danger and trouble ahead. Clare, simply out of love for him and anxiety for herself, will I know, do all she can to drag him from the thing that he should follow—and Cards will help her—out of sheer mischief, I verily believe.
“On their own heads be it. As to the carpets you asked me to go and look at . . .”
III
“. . . And now for the supper party. Although there's a whole day behind me I'm still quivering under the excitement of it. As I tell you about it it will in all probability, declare itself as a perfectly ordinary affair, and, indeed, I think that you should have been there yourself to have realised the emotion of it. But I'll try and give it you word for word. I was kept in the city and arrived late and they were all there. Mrs. Launce, twinkling all over with kindness, Maradick in his best Stock Exchange manner, the Gales (Janet Gale perfectly lovely), the old Rossiters, Cards, shining with a mixture of enterprise and knowledge of the world and last of all a very pale, rather nervous, untidy Irish woman, a Miss Monogue. Clare was so radiantly happy that I knew that she wasn't happy at all had obviously taken a great deal of trouble about her hair and had it all piled up on the top of her head and looked wonderful. I can't describe these things, but you know that when she's bent on giving an impression she seems to stand on her toes all the time—well, she was standing on every kind of toe, moral, physical, emotional last night. Finally there was Peter, looking as though his evening dress had been made for something quite different from social dinner parties. It fitted all right, but it was too comfortable to be smart—he looked, beside Cards, like a good serviceable cob up against the smartest of hunters. Peter's rough, bullet head, the way that he stands with his legs wide apart and his thick body holding itself deliberately still with an effort as though he were on board ship—and then that smile that won all our hearts ages ago right out of the centre of his brown eyes first and then curving his mouth, at last seizing all his body—but always, in spite
