It
was more like a dream than ever now.
He rose and quitted the place immediately she had finished,
waiting in the street until she appeared. She came out in a few
minutes.
"Father is going to a supper," she announced, "at the inn where
he has a room for receiving people. Will you come home with me
for an hour? Then we can go round and fetch him."
"I should like to," Tavernake answered.
Her lodgings were only a few steps away--a strange little house
in a narrow street. She opened the front door and ushered him
in.
"You understand, of course," she said, smiling, "that we have
abandoned the haunts of luxury altogether."
He looked around at the tiny room with its struggling fire and
horsehair sofa, linoleum for carpet, oleographs for pictures, and
he shivered, not for his own sake but for hers. On the sideboard
were some bread and cheese and a bottle of ginger beer.
"Please imagine," she begged, taking the pins from her hat, "that
you are in those dear comfortable rooms of ours down at Chelsea.
Draw that easy-chair up to what there is of the fire, and listen.
You smoke still?"
"I have taken to a pipe," he admitted.
"Then light it and listen," she went on, smoothing her hair for a
minute in front of the looking-glass. "You want to know about
Elizabeth, of course."
"Yes," he said, "I want to know."
"Elizabeth, on the whole," Beatrice continued, "got out of all
her troubles very well. Her husband's people were wild with her,
but Elizabeth was very clever.
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