Page:The Relentless City.djvu/232

222 she said;

Bertie felt rather ashamed of his ill-temper, and, remembering the omission of their usual little ceremony, he picked up her hand as it lay on the arm of her chair, and pressed it.

he said.

Bertie's feeling of shame grew a little hotter.

he said.

She smiled at him.

she said.

So another cloud flecked the blue of June.

That afternoon their guests began to arrive for the weekend party. It was the first they had given, and Amelie somehow felt a little nervous, for it was her début as hostess. Lord Bolton was coming, and, in a way, it seemed to her hardly decent that she should be receiving him in this house. She had met him once or twice before, and was vaguely terrified at him. Sybil Massington was coming too, with Charlie, to whom she was to be married in July. Ginger was accompanying his father; other friends of Bertie's raised their numbers to a dozen, and both her own