She went back into Marcia’s room with Sylvia, and found it empty. A little bright flame of rage flickered up in Gay. It burned in her cheeks and set a dancing spark in her eyes. She looked at Sylvia in the pink brocade chair and said,

“What on earth have you been up to?”

Sylvia Colesborough was taking off her grey suede gloves, frowning a little because the third left-hand finger had caught itself up on the big diamond in her engagement ring. It was a very big diamond, a single stone surrounded by fine brilliants. The gloves were very expensive gloves. Sylvia laid them in her lap and folded her hands upon them. She was wearing a pale rose lipstick and nail-polish, and green eye-shadow, but she had the sense to leave her eyelashes alone. Nature had painted them a full six tones deeper than her flax-gold hair, and, lavishly generous, had tipped the curling ends with gold. It was these lashes and the almost midnight blue of the eyes they screened which gave to Sylvia’s beauty a certain exquisite strangeness.

She lifted those lovely eyes and said,

“Oh, Gay!”

Gay tapped with her foot upon the rose-coloured carpet.

“That gets us a lot farther, doesn’t it!” she said.

“But, Gay darling, Marcia said-”

“Marcia would! She always did fob you off on to me when she got half a chance!”

A sweet, fleeting smile touched Sylvia’s lips.

“Darling, you were so clever. You always got me out of things. I’ve always said you’re the cleverest person I know. You will help me, won’t you?”

Gay leaned against the ornamental rail at the bottom of the bed, a rail of rose-coloured enamel with bright gilt knobs.

“Now look here, Sylvia, why should I help you? We were at school together, I was your bridesmaid, and you’re some sort of fifteenth cousin. You’ve never written me a line since you got married, you’ve never been near me since I came to London, and I’ve never been inside your house-”