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uncomfortably.
    Only Lord Breslau appeared immune to the undercurrents at work in the room.
    “But on the stage,” he said to the marquise, “we allow our disbelief to hang suspended and pretend all will be well. In any case, even a bad marriage leaves more hope than a set of corpses.”
    The marquise considered this a moment. “Perhaps you are right, Wes. It’s true that husbands and wives seem unwilling to leave a marriage, however unhappy it is. They will go to great lengths to preserve the form, when the content is gone.”
    Sir Aubrey was subjected to another penetrating shot from the marquise, and stirred restively in his chair. Lady Raleigh found the conversation not only unsavory but pointless. She was aware of her butler hovering beyond the doorway, which was a clue he wished to speak to her.
    “Excuse me,” she said. “I must speak to Wetmore.”
    “The butler,” Nigel explained to Lady Chamaude. “That would be about your wanting the downstairs bedchamber. The marquise always likes to sleep downstairs when she can,” he explained to the others. “Since we have a guest suite downstairs, I told her she might have it.”
    “It is a foolish habit left over from the terror in France,” the lady said. “My dear husband was pulled from his bed in the dead of night and taken to the Bastille. I always felt if we had been sleeping downstairs we would have heard them come, and perhaps Henri might have escaped. To this day I still feel unsafe in an upstairs bedchamber. The past has a way of hanging about us,” she said sadly, just before she fixed Sir Aubrey with another of those peculiarly meaningful looks.
    “You needn’t fear for your life at Belmont,” Nigel said heartily, and moved down to the end of the sofa to be closer to the marquise.
    “I know it is foolishness on my part,” she agreed. “We actresses are a superstitious lot. I surround myself with good-luck charms. This shawl,” she said, holding up the elegant paisley garment, “is my good-luck piece. I never travel without it.”
    The gentlemen smiled fondly at this evidence of ignorant superstition. Pamela regarded the shawl and noticed it looked remarkably new for a shawl that had done much traveling. The threads of the long silk fringe each hung separately. They would have bunched into unsightly clumps if the shawl were old. Its color, too, in shades of green and rose, matched the lady’s suit superbly, but would look quite at odds with other colors. An affectation, Pamela decided, and ascribed it to the marquise’s love of drama.
    When Lady Chamaude wrapped the shawl over her shoulders, Nigel sprang up from the sofa to help her. “Merci, chéri,” she murmured with a soft glance. Pamela was extremely glad Lady Raleigh wasn’t there to see that look.
    “I shall wear my good-luck charm when I go to the Garden to discuss playing Desdemona,” the marquise continued, directing her words to Breslau now. “I hear they are paying their leading ladies fifty pounds per performance. That was what Siddons made, at any rate.”
    “We’ll discuss your salary at another time, Fleur,” he replied. “In any case, tragedy pays no more than comedy, if that is what you are implying.”
    “A lady has to think of her future, when she has grown too old to perform.”
    Sir Aubrey waited for her head to turn in his direction. On this occasion he was spared, but he knew in his bones the words were uttered for his benefit. She had come to hold him to ransom.
    “Pardon me,” he said, and rose from his seat. “I see Dot is beckoning me from the hall.”
    A short silence fell over the remaining company. “More tea, anyone?” Pamela asked.
    Breslau strolled languidly toward the tea tray and held out his cup.
     

Chapter Three
     
    “Well, Miss Comstock,” Breslau said, with that heartiness reserved for invalids, poor relations, unattractive lumps of girls, and other social misfits, “I was happy to hear you are not averse to the