Old Sinners Never Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

would never have a better opportunity. But on the General’s left was Virginia Allan, and he was unlikely to have a better opportunity to curry her favour either.
    It was remarkable the career so attractive a woman could have behind her, a try at so many occupations; a new one showed up at every turn in the conversation. There was something almost kittenish about her—not in the disgusting, coy manner, but in the sudden ingratiating twists she gave things, dipping daintily into one provocative bit of talk after another. The General was hard put to give their hostess any part of his attention.
    But she needed it, he realized, sending her a sidelong glance. She was working as hard tonight as Ed was, and she ordinarily throve on such doings. Her whole mind turned to it, like a morning glory stretching for sun. Now he could see her stretch her lips to make a smile. He complimented her on the dinner, and then ran dry. The best he could do was include her addressing himself to the ambassador.
    “When were you on the Riviera last, Excellency?”
    “Such a long time ago,” Cru said. “Was it 1928? Laura, do you remember?”
    Mrs. Chatterton said hastily, “It must have been.” Hastily, to avoid particulars? the General wondered. “I saw a ring around the moon last night. I hope it won’t rain tonight. It would ruin the ball.” She rattled on. “Do you remember the play, Dark of the Moon ?”
    “Are you having superstitions, Laura?” the ambassador asked.
    “Oh, no.”
    But she was having something, the General thought, something she was unlikely to confide in him. Thank God. He turned back to Virginia Allan as soon as he could. “Curious,” he said, “there are some women with whom it is absolutely impossible for me to strike up a conversation.”
    “You are kind of forbidding, General.”
    “I have never forbidden a woman anything in my life, to my sorrow,” he said. “And couldn’t you manage to call me ‘Ransom’, Miss Allan … Virginia, if I may?”
    “I think Ransom is just a lovely name … Ransom. It’s so—southern.”
    “Old family attachment,” he murmured.
    “Really?” she said brightly. “Were they pirates?”
    The General cleared his throat. So charmingly naïve. “Horse thieves,” he said. “That’s how I came to start in the cavalry.”
    “Ransom, you’re pulling my leg,” she said.
    The General thought the better of what he was about to say, and merely sounded a rumble deep in his throat.
    “What you were saying about women and conversation,” Virginia said, laying down her fish fork, “you know, Ransom, some women can’t talk to anybody unless they’re telling secrets.”
    “But I love secrets,” the General protested.
    “You love women, too, don’t you?”
    “Especially women with secrets.”
    Virginia laughed. She might even be blushing, he thought, but that was hard to tell. It was not very long thereafter—during the fowl course, after the first sip of a fine Rhone wine—that he proposed they go on to the ball together. “Unless you’d prefer not to go to the ball?”
    “Oh,” she said, “what a naughty idea!”
    “My dear, I am a patron of the arts, but that does not compel me to fraternize with the artists. That boor next to you—once a pretty good violinist …”
    “Monsieur Katz?”
    “What did you say?”
    She repeated, a lovely light whisper to her French.
    He leaned close to her ear and said, “I thought you were calling me ‘pussy cat’.”
    She found the impulse to laugh irresistible, and he found her laughter contagious so that he joined it, although to be sure, behind his napkin. An embarrassed silence hung round the table in the wake of their mirth.
    “You had better take care, General,” the ambassador volunteered his advice. “There are times it is not good to laugh.”
    “Oh, now, go on, Your Excellency,” Miss Allan joshed. “Laughter’s good for anybody any time.”
    “There are times,” Cru said, again ponderous, “when a