Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/48

 send. The room in which they were received was spacious. It was furnished as was every other drawing-room she had been in at Hong-Kong in a comfortable and homely style. It was a large party. They were the last to come and as they entered Chinese servants in uniform were handing round cocktails and olives. Mrs. Townsend greeted them in her casual fashion and looking at a list told Walter whom he was to take in to dinner.

Kitty saw a tall and very handsome man bear down on them.

“This is my husband.”

“I am to have the privilege of sitting next to you,” he said.

She immediately felt at ease and the sense of hostility vanished from her bosom. Though his eyes were smiling she had seen in them a quick look of surprise. She understood it perfectly and it made her inclined to laugh.

“I shan’t be able to eat any dinner,” he said, “and if I know Dorothy the dinner’s damned good.”

“Why not?”

“I ought to have been told. Some one really ought to have warned me.”

“What about?”

“No one said a word. How was I to know that I was going to meet a raging beauty?”

“Now what am I to say to that?”

“Nothing. Leave me to do the talking. And I’ll say it over and over again.”

Kitty, unmoved, wondered what exactly his wife had told him about her. He must have asked. And