“’Twill go hard,” he was saying, “if Lionel Ratcliffe comes not to his own to-night!”
“And Jeanne de Mantes to hers!” she cried then, in a kind of high-strained voice, rousing herself. And, falling back into her abstraction: “What a wicked mist there rises from the garden,” she went on, complaining. “Aye, would I were far from here!”
“And let pious Mistress Harcourt convert my Lord Constable?”
“A plague on you!” she shrieked in a sudden frenzy.
“Hush, hush! That word—have you forgot?”
A shadow fell on them as they leaned together. She looked up in terror. It was only the old butler, with a whispered message from Lady Chillingburgh to her grandson.
Lionel frowned: the interruption was unwelcome. He glanced at the clock, it was the hour of the reception; the guests would presently arrive, and he mistrusted the Frenchwoman’s tact, above all to-night, in this unwonted vapourish mood. He rose with ill humour.
“Some whimsy of my grandam about the tables, no doubt,” he muttered, as he sauntered from the room, pausing at the door to cast a last look of warning. And, truly,—for Fate plays such tricks upon those who would guide her,—scarce had his footsteps died away, when Lord Rockhurst himself entered unannounced upon the solitary guest, as enters the familiar of the house.