Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/48

 And he seemed pleased.

It was a round tea-table, with shiny silver tea-service, and silver kettle with a little flame, and pink and white oleanders. The little neat young footman carried the teacups, in white cotton gloves. Mrs Norris poured tea and cut cakes with a heavy hand.

Don Ramón sat on her right hand, the Judge on her left. Kate was between the Judge and Mr Henry. Everybody except Don Ramón and the Judge was a little nervous. Mrs Norris always put her visitors uncomfortably at their ease, as if they were captives and she the chieftainess who had captured them. She rather enjoyed it, heavily, archaeologically queening at the head of the table. But it was evident that Don Ramón, by far the most impressive person present, liked her. Cipriano, on the other hand, remained mute and disciplined, perfectly familiar with the tea-table routine, superficially quite at ease, but underneath remote and unconnected. He glanced from time to time at Kate.

She was a beautiful woman, in her own unconventional way, and with a certain richness. She was going to be forty next week. Used to all kinds of society, she watched people as one reads the pages of a novel, with a certain disinterested amusement. She was never in any society: too Irish, too wise.

“But of course nobody lives without hope,” Mrs Norris was saying banteringly to Don Ramón. "If it’s only the hope of a, to buy a litre of pulque.”

“Ah, Mrs Norris!" he replied in his quiet, yet curiously deep voice, like a violincello: "If pulque is the highest happiness!"

“Then we are fortunate, because a tostón will buy paradise," she said.

"It is a, Señora mia," said Don Ramón, laughing and drinking tea.

“Now won’t you try these little native cakes with sesame seeds on them!" said Mrs Norris to the table at large. “My cook makes them, and her national feeling is ﬂattered when anybody likes them. Mrs Leslie, do take one."

"I will,” said Kate. "Does one say "

“If one wishes," said Mrs Norris.

"Won’t you have one?" said Kate, handing the plate to Judge Burlap.