She felt the same depression fall upon the minds
of the others, as shadows can be seen to move and grow long at sunset.
She knew that the Collises and Dodo Wardropp were going to be
dissatisfied, and that they would talk against the house and their
accommodation in it, behind her back, saying that she had deliberately
deceived them.

Still, there were Dom Ferdinand and Casablanca. There was no deceit
where they were concerned. They wanted to meet girls with money, and
Dodo and Lottie wanted to meet men of title. There ought to be no danger
that any members of this party would leave solely because the cooking
was poor and the rooms badly furnished; and it was really Eve's wish to
throw the four together, so that they need not miss certain things which
lacked in her promised programme. But she had counted without herself.
It was not in her to surrender any men who might be near, to other
women, even when surrendering them would be to her advantage. In her
heart she despised Lottie Collis and Dodo Wardropp, and she had to try
her own weapons against theirs. She could not help this, and did it
almost unconsciously.

Throughout her whole life since she was fifteen she had lived by and
sometimes fallen by the fascination she had for men; not all men, but
many, and most of those whose type appealed to her. She could never
resist testing its power, even now when she loved the man she had
married, and would ruthlessly have sacrificed any other for him. She
tried it upon Dom Ferdinand and the Marquis de Casablanca. They
struggled, because they wished to make an impression upon the two girls
in the house; but they could not hold out against the allurement of the
primitive woman in Lady Dauntrey, and though they paid the girls
compliments and went about with them docilely, they looked at Eve. And
the girls saw not only the looks, but the weapons which Lady Dauntrey
used to win the men for herself, when she ought to have been furthering
her guests' interests. They began to hate her, and soon realized that
she would not be able to introduce them to the "best set" at Monte
Carlo, as she had promised. Still they stayed on, hoping a little, for
other people were expected to join the house party, and there was a
chance yet of something better. Besides, they found a small and bitter
pleasure in seeing the disappointment and humiliation of the woman who
had been so sure of herself, and had, by the force of her own strong
personality, ma