Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/72

 more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she had planned went unspoken that day.

But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the continual visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in self-defence her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons saw her lodger across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and plum-cake by the shining kettle.

If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter tea-service—velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sprigged china, and set out wine in her great-grandfather’s long-necked decanter, and, with what she considered a gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of her guest’s desultory conversation, and sincerely tried to discover the humorous