She hung over the roses, the bitter-sweet of the memories they evoked coming up to her with their delicate fragrance. Chalfont always bought her Catherine Mermets when they were in bloom, great masses of them; but it was Hugh Lambert who had first given her a bunch of three, purchased at a street corner at sixpence each in the days when sixpences were scarce with him.
"I got them because they are your favorites," he said. "I thought she would be sure to like what you like. Anyway, what's good enough for you is good enough for anybody."
She put her arm over his shoulder and kissed him.
"You're always so thoughtful, and so loyal," she said. "I'm getting old and you remain steadfast. It seems such an irony of fate that I can't love you as you deserve. Although Hugh has no claim on my feelings or my memory, I can't forget him. I give you so little, Leonard. One day, perhaps, some girl will love you worthily, and make up for my meanness."
"Keep those roses," he said. "I'll get Miss Delamere some more."
"No, no, I want her to have them. Put your card in. Shall I write the address?"
Woolf was with Maggy when the post brought her the roses. He cut the string and stood looking on while she removed the tissue wrappings.
"Oh, roses!" she cried delightedly. "Who can have sent them?"
They had traveled as well as could be expected of cut flowers, but they were flagging a little for want of water.
Woolf pounced on the card that accompanied them.
"'Lord Chalfont,'" he read, and scowled at the club address in the corner. "Damn his impudence sending you flowers! And how the devil does he know your address?" he demanded angrily.
"You needn't mind, Fred," she said placably.
"Of course not. You needn't go back to that. You said you'd forgiven me for going to lunch with Mrs. Lambert that day. You know I met him there, and that's all there is in it. He must have known that I--I hadn't been well--through Lexie, and sent the flowers out of politeness." She turned the lid of the box up. "The address is in a woman's hand: Mrs. Lambert's. There's nothing to look so furious about."
The fact that flowers should come to Maggy from a comparative stranger would not, of itself, have irritated Woolf. She often received flowers now, and from men she had never met. Her good looks and prominence at the Pall Mall accounted for this. Woolf made no objection. The admiration of other men for her rather enhanced her desirability in his eyes. He took it as a tribute to his own good taste in having secured possession of her. But Chalfont's name affected him in much the same manner as a red rag does a bull. It blinded him with rage because it stood for everything that he himself was devoid of--birth, breeding, nobility of nature--and, moreover, because it was that of the man who had humbled him by having him turned out of the select club to which he aspired to membership. That incident had touched Woolf on the raw. It was much as if he had been told that he was unworthy of association with gentlemen.