The little scene enacted
so quietly in the pretty, conventional drawing-room, with its pale walls
and beflowered furniture, was of great tenseness.
Before anyone had spoken the door opened and the Newlyns and Pat
Yelverton came in, Mrs. Newlyn hastily clasping the last of the myriad
bracelets that were so peculiarly unbecoming to her thin red arms. She
and her husband both were bird-like in eye and gesture, and their
nicknames among their intimates were, though neither of them knew it,
the Cassowary and the Sparrow, she being the Cassowary. Besides being
bird-like, they were both bores of the deepest dye.
Pat Yelverton was a blond giant with a very bad reputation, a genius for
Bridge, and the softest, most caressing voice that ever issued from a
man's throat.
Meeting the new-comers at the door, Brigit shook hands with them and
returned, with an aimless air peculiar to her, to the fire.
She knew them all so well, and they all bored her to tears, except
Carron, whom she strongly hated. Everybody bored her, and everything.
With the utmost sincerity she wondered for the thousandth time why she
had ever been born.
As the others chattered, she went to a window and stood looking out
over the moonlit lawn.
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