's.
Nelly Monson always gives me a headache, she talks so loud. And my room
was under the nursery. I do hate children."

Carron caught his breath. She was actually talking civilly to him. And,
then, remembering his request to her mother, he, for a second, hated
Lady Kingsmead with a bitter and senseless hatred. Was Brigit, after
all, only talking to him as a favour to her mother? But a second's
reflection showed him the folly of this idea. Had Brigit ever done
anything to please her mother? Never.

One of the two women-guests sat down at the piano and began to play,
very softly, an old song of Tosti's. Everybody listened. A hansom
jingled by and a bicycle's sharp bell was a loud noise in the
after-dinner silence.

Joyselle was standing by a table, absently balancing on his forefinger a
long, broad, ivory paper-knife. He was, Brigit remembered, curiously
adept in balancing, and once she had seen him go through, for Tommy's
amusement, a whole series of the kind, from the classic broomstick on
his chin, to blowing three feathers about the room at a time, allowing
none of them to fall. How quickly he had moved, in spite of his great
height, and how Tommy had laughed. But, for the past week, something had
gone wrong with the violinist. He had been away from the house one day
when she went, and that afternoon, when she "dropped in" on her way from
the station, he had hardly spoken. In his silence he seemed immeasurably
far from her, and she would have given worlds to read his thoughts.

During dinner he had been conventionally polite, but playing a _role_
was so foreign to him that even this laudable one of pretending to be
amused when he was bored sat gloomily and guiltily on him.

Carron sat by her for twenty minutes, but her eyes were fixed on
Joyselle, and her whole mind groping in the darkness for his.

There was a ball that night, so the party broke up early, but Joyselle
stayed, absently, as if he did not notice that the others were going. He
sat on a sofa and smoked cigarettes rapidly, rolling them himself, with
quick, nervous movements, and throwing them into a silver bowl before
they were half-burnt.

Lady Kingsmead tried to talk to him, but finding that, though he
answered her politely enough, his thoughts were elsewhere, gave him up
and took up a book, casting an impatient look at her daughter.

Carron had gone early, too restless to stay quiet, and afraid to rouse
Brigit out of her curious lethargic stat