Majendie at the other end of the table caught sight of her detached, unhappy look, and became detached and unhappy himself, till Mrs. Hannay rallied him on his abstraction.

“If you are in love, my dear Wallie,” she whispered, “you needn’t show it so much.  It’s barely decent.”

“Isn’t it?  Anyhow, I hope it’s quite decently bare,” he answered, tempted by her folly.  They were gay at Mrs. Hannay’s end of the table.  But Anne, who watched her husband intently, looked in vain for that brilliance which had distinguished him the other night, when he dined in Thurston Square.  These Hannays, she said to herself, made him dull.

Now, though Anne didn’t in the least want to talk to Mr. Hannay, Mr. Hannay displeased her by not wanting to talk more to her.  Not that he talked very much to anybody.  Now and then the Canon’s niece, Mildred Wharton, the pretty girl on his left, moved him to a high irrelevance, in those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst.  Pretty Mildred and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their intercourse.

To Anne the dinner was intolerably long.  She tried to be patient with it, judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen to.  There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a noble elevation.

At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests to eat and drink.  But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint of filling his master’s glass, and turned a politely deaf ear to his protests.  And then her voice rose.

“Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious.  Gould, hand the pineapple ice to Mr. Hannay.  I adore pineapple ice,” said Mrs. Hannay.  “Wallie, you’re drinking nothing.  Fill Mr. Majendie’s glass, Gould, fill it—­fill it.”  She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay.

In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her to the sofa.  She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she put cushions at her head, and more cushions under her feet; for Mrs. Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable about her.  “You come,” said she, “and sit down by me on this sofa, and let’s have a cosy talk.  That’s it.  Only you want another cushion.  No?—­Do—­Won’t you really?  Then it’s four for me,” said Mrs. Hannay, supporting herself in various postures of experimental comfort, “one for my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head.  Now I’m comfy.  I adore cushions, don’t you?  My husband says I’m a little down cushion myself, so I suppose that’s why.”

Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually than you could snub a little down cushion.  It would be impossible, she thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface.  Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended and her vulgarity began.