In the meantime Mr. Lanley began to grow dissatisfied with the prolonged role of spectator. He preferred danger to oblivion; and turning to Mrs. Wayne, he said, with his politest smile:
“How are the bridges?”
“Oh, dear,” she answered, “I must have been terribly tactless—to make you so angry.”
Mr. Lanley drew himself up.
“I was not angry,” he said.
She looked at him with a sort of gentle wonder.
“You gave me the impression of being.”
The very temperateness of the reply made him see that he had been inaccurate.
“Of course I was angry,” he said. “What I mean is that I don’t understand why I was.”
Meantime, on the opposite side of the table, Mathilde and Pete were equally immersed, murmuring sentences of the profoundest meaning behind faces which they felt were mask-like.