And she laid the book of poems on a table and prepared to get up from the
sofa.
"Rot!" said Lord Holme; "if you're nervous, I'll go."
She leaned back.
"Very well."
"In a minute."
He struck a match and let it out.
"Do go now, there's a good dog," she said coaxingly.
He struck another match and held it head downwards.
"You needn't hurry a feller."
He tapped his cigarette gently on his knee, and applied the flame to it.
"That's better."
Lady Holme moved violently on the sofa. She had a pricking sensation all
over her body, and her face felt suddenly very hot, as if she had fever.
A ridiculous, but painful idea started up suddenly in her mind. Could
Fritz suspect anything? Was he playing with her? She dismissed it at once
as the distorted child of a guilty conscience. Fritz was not that sort of
man. He might be a brute sometimes, but he was never a subtle brute. He
blew two thin lines of smoke out through his nostrils, now with a sort of
sensuous, almost languid, deliberation, and watched them fade away in the
brilliantly-lit room. Lady Holme resolved to adopt another manner, more
in accord with her condition of tense nervousness.
"When I ask you to do a thing, Fritz, you might have the decency to do
it," she said sharply. "You're forgetting what's due to me--to any
woman."
"Don't fuss at this time of night."
"I want to go to bed, but I'm not going till I know the house is properly
shut up.
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