Hugh was no expert on decoration but he immediately recognized the gorgeous, extravagant style of Louis XVI. The ceiling was a riot of plaster molding, the walls had inset panels of flock wallpaper, and all the tables and chairs were perched on thin gilded legs that looked as if they might snap. The colors were yellow, orange-red, gold and green. Hugh could easily imagine prim people saying it was vulgar, concealing their envy beneath a pretense of distaste. In fact it was sensual. It was a room in which impossibly wealthy people did anything they pleased.
Several other guests had arrived already and stood around drinking champagne and smoking cigarettes. This was new to Hugh: he had never seen people smoking in a drawing room. Solly caught his eye and detached himself from a group of laughing people to come over. "Pilaster, how nice of you to come! How are you, for goodness' sake?"
Hugh perceived that Solly had become a little more extrovert. He was still fat and bespectacled, and there was already a stain of some kind on his white waistcoat, but he was jollier than ever and, Hugh immediately sensed, happier too.
"I'm very well, thanks, Greenbourne," Hugh said.
"I know it! I've been watching your progress. I wish our bank had someone like you in America. I hope the Pilasters are paying you a fortune--you deserve it."
"And you've become a socialite, they say."
"None of my doing. I got married, you know." He turned and tapped the bare white shoulder of a short woman in an eggshell-green dress. She was facing the other way but her back was oddly familiar, and a feeling of deja vu came over Hugh, making him unaccountably sad. Solly said to her: "My dear, do you remember my old friend Hugh Pilaster?"
She paused a moment longer, finishing what she was saying to her companions, and Hugh thought: Why do I feel breathless at the sight of her? Then she turned very slowly, like a door opening into the past, and Hugh's heart stopped as he saw her face.
"Of course I remember him," she said. "How are you, Mr. Pilaster?"
Hugh stared, speechless, at the woman who had become Mrs. Solomon Greenbourne.
It was Maisie.
Section 2
