"So, you are enrolled among the sons of my blood!" she said, "So are
you bound to me and mine!" She moved to the further end of the table
and stood there looking round upon them all. Again the slow, sweet,
half-disdainful smile irradiated her features. "Well, children!--what
else remains to do? What next? What next can there be but drink--smoke
--talk! Man's three most cherished amusements!"
She sat down, throwing back her heavy cloak on either side of her. Her
hair had come partly unbound, and noticing a tress of it falling on her
shoulder, she drew out the comb and let it fall altogether in a mass of
gold-brown, like the tint of a dull autumn leaf, flecked here and there
with amber. Catching it dexterously in one hand, she twisted it up
again in a loose knot, thrusting the comb carelessly through.
"Drink--smoke--talk, Sergius!" she repeated, still smiling; "Shall I
ring?"
Sergius Thord stood looking at her irresolutely, with the half-angry,
half-pleading expression of a chidden child.
"As you please, Lotys!" he answered. Whereupon she pressed an invisible
spring under the table, which set a bell ringing in some lower quarter
of the house.
"Pasquin Leroy, Axel Regor, Max Graub!" she said--"Take your places
for to-night beside me--newcomers are always thus distinguished! And
all of you sit down! You are grouped at present like hungry wolves
waiting to spring.
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