Free Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

an octave, her hands are so small.”
    He was looking at them as she laid down her dessert knife and fork.
    She flushed a little and said quickly: “I've got a very long little finger. I expect that helps.”
    “You must be selfish, then,” said Kay. “If you're unselfish you have a short little finger.”
    “Is that true?” asked Mary Aldin. “Then I must be unselfish. Look, my little fingers are quite short.”
    “I think you are very unselfish,” said Thomas Royde, eyeing her thoughtfully.
    She went red - and continued, quickly: “Who's the most unselfish of us? Let's compare little fingers. Mine are shorter than yours, Kay. But Thomas, I think, beats me.”
    “I beat you both,” said Nevile. “Look.” He stretched out a hand.
    “Only one hand, though,” said Kay. “Your left-hand little finger is short, but your right-hand one is much finger. And your left hand is what you are born with and the right hand is what you make of your life. So that means that you were born unselfish and have become more selfish as time goes on.”
    “Can you tell fortunes, Kay?” asked Mary Aldin. She stretched out her hand, palm upward. “A fortune-teller told me I should have two husbands and three children. I shall have to hurry up!”
    Kay said: “Those little crosses aren't children, they're journeys. That means you'll take three journeys across water.”
    “That seems unlikely, too,” said Mary Aldin.
    Thomas Royde asked her: “Have you travelled much?”
    “No, hardly at all.”
    He heard an undercurrent of regret in her voice.
    “You would like to?”
    “Above everything.”
    He thought in his slow reflective way of her life. Always in attendance on an old woman. Calm, tactful, an excellent manager. He asked curiously: “Have you lived with Lady Tressilian long?”
    “For nearly fifteen years. I came to be with her after my father died. He had been a helpless invalid for some years before his death.”
    And then, answering the question she felt to be in his mind: “I'm thirty-six. That's what you wanted to know, wasn't it?”
    “I did wonder,” he admitted. “You might be - any age, you see.”
    “That's rather a two-edged remark!”
    “I suppose it is. I didn't mean it that way.”
    That sombre, thoughtful gaze of his did not leave her face. She did not find it embarrassing. It was too free from self-consciousness for that - a genuine, thoughtful interest. Seeing his eyes on her hair, she put up her hand to the one white lock.
    “I've had that,” she said, “since I was very young.” “I like it,” said Thomas Royde simply.
    He went on looking at her. She said at last, in a slightly amused tone of voice: “Well, what is the verdict?”
    He reddened under his tan.
    “Oh, I suppose it is rude of me to stare. I was wondering about you - what you are really like.”
    “Please,” she said hurriedly and rose from the table. She said as she went into the drawing-room with her arm through Audrey's: “Old Mr. Treves is coming to dinner to-morrow, too.”
    “Who's he?” asked Nevile.
    “He brought an introduction from the Rufus Lords. A delightful old gentleman. He's staying at the Balmoral Court. He's got a weak heart and looks very frail, but his faculties are perfect and he has known a lot of interesting people. He was a solicitor or a barrister -I forget which.”
    “Everybody down here is terribly old,” said Kay discontentedly.
    She was standing just under a tall lamp. Thomas was looking that way, and he gave her that same slow interested attention that he gave to anything that was immediately occupying his line of vision.
    He was struck suddenly with her intense and passionate beauty. A beauty of vivid colouring, of abundant and triumphant vitality. He looked across from her to Audrey, pale and moth-like in a silvery grey dress.
    He smiled to himself and murmured: “Rose Red and Snow White.”
    “What?” It was Mary Aldin at his elbow.
    He repeated the words. “Like the old fairy