Hyacinth.

'I have my faults, Miss Verney, but I'm not blasphemous. Will you have
an olive?'

She accepted it. He lowered his voice to say--

'How wonderful you're looking tonight!'

'What am I to say to that? I don't think people should make unanswerable
remarks at dinner,' she said, trying to look reproving, but turning pink
with pleasure.

'If people will look adorable at dinner--or anywhere--they must take the
consequences,' said Cecil, under cover of a very animated discussion
between Bruce and Miss Yeo on sixpenny cab-fares.

Then for a second he felt a remorseful twinge of disloyalty. But that
was nonsense; wasn't he obeying Mrs Raymond's distinct commands? Nothing
would please her so much....

And to flirt with Hyacinth was not at all a disagreeable task. He
reflected that Eugenia might have asked him to do something a good
deal harder.

Under the combined influence, then, of duty, pique, and a little
champagne, he gave way to the curious fascination that Hyacinth had
always had for him, and she was only too ready to be happy.

He remembered how he had first met her. He had been dragged to the