her hand, closes her fingers about it with his own. His nail shows brown against the fresh pink of her palm. She falls in another awkward curtsey.
Now my smile is fixed like the grimace on the face of a corpse. When she turns back, I cannot look at her. I go to my dressing-room and close the door, lie face down upon my bed, and am seized and shaken by laughter—a terrible laughter, it courses silently through me, like filthy water—I shudder, and shudder, and finally am still.
''How do you find your new girl, Miss Lilly?'' he asks me at dinner, his eyes upon his plate. He is carefully parting meat from the spine of a fish—the bone so pale and so fine it is almost translucent, the meat in a thickening coating of butter and sauce. Our food comes cold to the table in winter. In summer it comes too warm.∞本∞作∞品∞由∞思∞兔∞網∞提∞供∞線∞上∞閱∞讀∞
I say, ''Very—biddable, Mr Rivers.''
''You think she will suit?''
''I think so, yes.''
''