'Now I expressly forbid your encouraging Vida in silence! Most men like to be amused. You know perfectly well _you_ do!'

'Ah, yes,' he said languidly, catching Haycroft's eye and almost making terms with him upon a common ground of masculine understanding. 'Yes, yes. It is well known what children we are. Pleased with a rattle!'

Then, as if fearing he might be going too far, he smiled that disarming smile of his, and said good-humouredly, 'I know now why you are called a good hostess.'

'Why?' asked the lady a little anxiously, for his compliments were not always soothing.

A motion towards the watch-pocket. 'No one, to look at you, would suppose that your spirit was racked between the clock and the door.'

'Oh,' she said, relieved, 'if they come in five minutes or so, you'll see! The dinner won't be a penny the worse. Jules is such a wizard. All I mind is seeing Freddy fussed.' She turned with an engaging smile to her minister again. 'Freddy has the most angelic temper except when he's hungry--bless him! Now that he's talking to Vida Levering, Freddy'll forget whether it's before dinner or after.'

'What! what!' said a brisk old gentleman, with a face like a peculiarly wicked monkey. He abandoned Mrs. Townley with enthusiasm in order to say to his hostess, 'Show me the witch who can work that spell!'

'Oh, dear, I'm afraid,' said Mrs. Freddy, prettily, 'I'm dreadfully afraid that means you're starving! Does it make you morose as it does Freddy?' she asked, with an air of comic terror. 'Then we won't wait.'

She tossed out one arm with a funny little movement that sent her thin draperies floating as though towards the bell.

'My dear lady!' the old gentleman arrested her. 'I hunger, it is true, but only for knowledge.' In a silent but rather horrible laugh he wrinkled up his aged nose, which was quite enough wrinkled and sufficiently 'up' already. 'Who _is_ the witch?'

'Why, we were talking about a member of your family.' She turned again to the new minister. 'Mr. Fox-Moore--Sir--oh! how absurd! I was going to introduce two pillars of the State to one another. I _must_ be anxious about those late people, after all.'

'As a matter of fact you and I never have met,' said Haycroft, cordially taking old Mr. Fox-Moore's hand. 'Beside you permanent officials we ephemerae, the sport of parties----'

'Ah, _that's_ all right!' Mrs. Freddy's head, poised an instant on one side, seemed to say.

'Who is it? Who is late?' demanded Mrs. Graham Townley, whose entrance into the conversation produced the effect of the sudden opening of window and door on a windy day. People shrink a little in the draught, and all light, frivolous things are blown out of the way. English people stand this sort of thing very much as they stand the actual draughts in their cold houses. They feel it to be good for them on the whole. Mrs.

Graham Townley was acknowledged to be a person of much character. Though her interest in public affairs was bounded only by the limits of the Empire, she had found time to reform the administration of a great London hospital. Also she was related to a great many people. In the ultra smart set she of course had no _raison d'etre_, but in the older society it was held meet that these things be. So that when she put her question, not only was she not ignored, but each one felt it a serious thing for anybody to be so late that Mrs. Graham Townley instead of b.u.t.ton-holing some one with, 'What, now, should you say is the extent of the Pan-Islamic influence in Egypt?' should be reduced to asking, 'Who are we waiting for?'

'It's certain to be a man,' said Lady John Ulland, as calmly convinced as one who states a natural law.

'Why?' asked her niece, the charming girl in rose colour.

'No woman would dare to come in so late as this. She'd have turned back and telephoned that the horses had run away with her or something of the sort.'

'd.i.c.k Farnborough won't turn back.'

'Oh, Mr. Farnborough's the culprit!' said a smartly dressed woman, with a nervous, rather angry air, though the ropes of fine pearls she wore might, some would think, have soothed the most savage breast.

'Yes, d.i.c.k and Captain Beeching!' said Mrs. Freddy; 'and I shall give them just two minutes more!'

'Aunt Ellen _said_ it couldn't be a woman,' remarked the girl in pink, as one struck with such perspicacity.

'Well, I wouldn't ask them again to _my_ house,' said the discontented person with the pearls.

'Yes, she would,' Lady John said aside to Borrodaile. 'She has a daughter, and so have most of the London hostesses, and the young villains know it.'

'Oh, yes; sometimes they never turn up at all,' said the pink niece.

'After accepting!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lady Whyteleafe of the pearls.

'Oh, yes; sometimes they don't even answer.'

'I never heard of such impudence.'

'I have, twice this year,' said Mrs. Graham Townley, with that effect of breaking by main force into a conversation instead of being drawn into it. 'Twice in this last year I've sat with an empty place on one side of me at a dinner-party. On each occasion it was a young member of parliament who never turned up and never sent an apology.'

'The same man both times?' asked Lord Borrodaile.

'Yes; different houses, but the same man.'

'He _knew_!' whispered Borrodaile in Lady John's ear.

'd.i.c.k Farnborough has been complaining that since he smashed his motor all existence has become disorganized. I always feel'--the hostess addressed herself to the minister and the pearls--'don't you, that one ought to stretch a point for people who have to go about in cabs?'

As Haycroft began a disquisition on the changes in social life initiated by the use of the motor-car, Mrs. Freddy floated away.

Borrodaile, looking after her, remarked, 'It's humane of my sister-in-law to think of making allowances. Most of us gratify the dormant cruelty in human nature by keeping an eagle eye on the wretched late ones when at last they _do_ slink in. Don't you know'--he turned to Lady John--'that look of half-resentful interest?'

'Perfectly. Every one wants to see whether these particular culprits wear their rue with a difference.'

'Or whether,' Borrodaile went on, 'whether, like the majority, they merely look abject and fl.u.s.tered, and whisper agitated lies. Personally I have known it to be the most interesting moment of the evening.'

What brought Mrs. Fox-Moore's plight forcibly home to Mrs. Freddy was seeing Vida leave her own animated group to join her sister. Mrs. Freddy made her way across the room, stopping a moment to say to Freddy as she pa.s.sed--

'_Do_ go and make conversation to Lady Whyteleafe.'

'Which is Lady Whyteleafe?' drawled Freddy.

'Oh, you _always_ forget her! What _am_ I to do with you? She's the woman with the pearls.'

'Not that cross-looking----'

'Sh! Yes, darling, that's the one. She's only looking like that because you aren't talking to her;' and Mrs. Freddy overtook Vida just as she reached the Desert Island where Mrs. Fox-Moore stood, looking seaward for a sail.

A few moments later, after ringing for dinner, Mrs. Freddy paused an instant, taking in the fact that Lady Whyteleafe hadn't been made as happy by Mr. Tunbridge's attentions as his wife had prophesied. No, the angry woman with the pearls, so far from being intent upon Freddy's remarks, was levelling at Mrs. Freddy the critical eye that says, 'Now I shall see if I can determine just how miserably conscious you are that dinner's unpardonably late, everybody starving, and since you've only just rung, that you have at least eight minutes still to fill up before you'll hear that you are "served."' Lady Whyteleafe leaned against the back of the little periwinkle damask sofa, and waited to see Mrs.

Freddy carry off these last minutes of suspense by an affectation of great good spirits.

But the lady under the social microscope knew a trick worth two of that.

She could turn more than one mishap to account.

'Oh, Freddy! Oh, Lady Whyteleafe! I've just gone and said the most awful, dreadful, appalling thing! Oh, I should like to creep under the sofa and die!'

'What's up?' demanded Mr. Freddy, with an air of relief at being reinforced.

'I've been talking to Vida Levering and that funereal sister of hers.'

'Oh, Mrs. Fox-Moore!' said Lady Whyteleafe, obviously disappointed.

'She's a step-sister, isn't she?'

'Yes, yes. Oh, I wish she'd never stepped over my threshold!'