"Well, you are honest, Nina."
She had her coffee and liqueur, she was graceful and composed and
refined, either Jim or Rochester will have a very nice wife.
Burton coughed when she had left.
"Out with it, Burton!"
"Mrs. Ardilawn is a kind lady, Sir Nicholas."
"Charming."
"I believe you'd be better with some lady to look after you, Sir--."
"To hell with you. Telephone for Mr. Maurice--I don't want any woman--we
can play piquet."
This is how my day ended--.
Maurice and piquet--then the widow and the divorcée for dinner--and now
alone again! The sickening rot of it all.
* * * * *
Sunday--Nina came for tea--she feels that I am a great comfort to her
in this moment of her life, so full of indecision--It seems that Jim has
turned up too, at the Ritz, where Rochester still is, and that his
physical charm has upset all her calculations again.
"I am really very worried Nicholas," she said, "and you, who are a dear
family friend"--I am a family friend now!--"ought to be able to help
me."
"What the devil do you want me to do, Nina?--outset them both, and ask
you to marry me?"
"My dearest Nicholas!" it seemed to her that I had suggested that she
should marry father Xmas! "How funny you are!"
Once it was the height of her desire--Nina is eight years older than I
am--I can see now her burning eyes one night on the river in the June of
1914, when she insinuated, not all playfully, that it would be good to
wed.
"I think you had better take Jim my dear, after all. You are evidently
becoming in love with him and you have proved to me that the physical
charm matters most,--or if you are afraid of that, you had better do as
another little friend of mine does when she is attracted--she takes a
fortnight at the sea!"
"The sea would be awful in this weather! I should send for both in
desperation!" and she laughed and began to take an interest in the
furnishings of my flat. She looked over it, and Burton pointed out all
its merits to her (My crutch hurts my shoulder so much to-day I did not
want to move out of my chair). I could hear Burton's remarks, but they
fell upon unheeding ears--Nina is not cut out for a nurse, my poor
Burton, if you only knew--!
When she returned to my sitting room tea was in, and she poured it out
for me, and then she remarked.