Michael watched Stella's glances rather anxiously.

Lily put on a chiffon frock, of aquamarine, and, though she looked
beautiful in it, he wished she had worn black: this frock made her seem
a little theatrical, he fancied; or was it the effect of her against the
stern dining-room, and nothing whatever to do with the frock? Stella,
too, whom he had always considered a personality of some extravagance,
seemed to have grown suddenly very stiff and conventional. It used
always to be himself who criticized people: Stella had always been
rather too lenient. Perhaps it was being married to Alan; or was Lily
the reason? Yet superficially everything seemed to be going all right,
especially when he consoled himself by remembering the abruptness of
Lily's introduction. After dinner Stella took Lily away with her into
the drawing-room and left Michael with Alan. Michael tried to feel that
this was what he had expected would happen; but he could not drive away
the consciousness of a new formality brooding over Hardingham. It was
annoying, too, the way in which Alan seemed deliberately to avoid any
reference to Lily. He would not even remind Michael of the evening at
the Drury Lane pantomime, when he had met her five or six years ago.
Perhaps he had forgotten driving home in a cab with her sister on that
occasion. Michael grew exasperated by his talk about cricket pitches;
and yet he could not bring himself to ask right out what Alan thought of
her, because it would have impinged upon his pride to do so. In about
ten minutes they heard the sound of the piano, and tacitly they agreed
to forego the intimacy of drinking port together any longer.

Stella closed the piano with a slam when they came into the
drawing-room, and asked Lily if she would like some bridge.

"Oh, no. I hate playing cards. But you play."

It was for Michael a nervous evening. He was perpetually on guard for
hostile criticism; he was terribly anxious that Lily should make a good
impression. Everything seemed to go wrong. Games were begun and ended
almost in the same breath. Finally he managed to find a song that Lily
thought she remembered, and Stella played her accompaniment very
aggressively, Michael fancied; for by this time he regarded the
slightest movement on her part or Alan's as an implication of
disapproval. Lily was tired, luckily, and was ready to go to bed early.

When Stella came down again, Michael felt he ought to supplement the few
details of