"My dear children——" But Muriel had by this time recovered her breath and courage. She raised a peremptory hand.
"One minute. We've got something to tell you all."
"But surely, dear, after dinner," Mrs Marston began.
"No, mother, dear, now," and, with a twinkle in her eye and a sly glance at her embarrassed lover, Muriel made her alarming announcement:
"Roland and I, mother, we're going to be married."
Roland had seen in a French novel a startling incident of domestic revelation recorded by two words: consternation générale, and those two words suited the terrible hush that followed Muriel's confession. It was not a hush of anger, or disapproval, but of utter and complete astonishment. For a few minutes no one said anything. The young men of the party either adjusted their collar studs and gazed towards the ceiling, or flicked a speck of dust from their trousers and gazed upon the floor. The young women gazed upon each other. Mrs Marston thought nervously of the condition of the retarded dinner, and Mr Marston tried, without success, to prove adequate to the situation. Only Muriel enjoyed it; she loved a rag, and her eyes passed from one figure to another; not one of them dared look at her.
"Well," she said at last, "we did think you'd want to congratulate us." To Mr Marston some criticism of himself appeared to be implied in this remark. He pulled down his waistcoat, coughed, and went through the preliminaries usual to him when preparing to address the board. And, in a sense, this was a board meeting, a family board meeting.
"My dear Muriel," he began, but he had advanced no further than these three words when the dinner gong sounded for the second time. It was a signal for Mrs Marston to bustle forward.
"Yes, yes, but the dinner'll be getting quite cold if we don't go in at once. Don't trouble to change, Mr Whately, please don't; but, Muriel, you must go up and do your hair, and if you have time change your frock."
"Weren't they lovely?" said Muriel, as she and Roland ran upstairs to wash. "I could have died with laughter."