Lord Calverly and Sir John dangling attendance would infallibly cause comment on any woman—let alone the beautiful Mrs. Odd. Yet Peter said, “Well!”
CHAPTER V
THE evening did not pass pleasantly at the Priory. Captain Archinard’s jolliness did not extend to family relationships; he often found family relationships a bore, and the contrasted stodginess of his own surroundings seemed greater after Mrs. Odd’s departure.
He muttered and fumed about the drawing-room after dinner.
He was confoundedly pinched for money, and upon his word he would not be surprised if he should have to sell the horses. “And what my life will be stuck down here without the hunting, I can’t imagine. Damnable!”
The Captain growled out the last word under his breath in consideration of Katherine and Hilda, who had joined their father and mother after their own tea and a game of lawn-tennis. But Mrs. Archinard was not the woman to allow to pass unnoticed such a well-founded cause of grievance.
With a look of delicate disgust she laid down the volume of Turgenieff that she was reading.
“Shall I send the children away, Charles? Either they or you had best go, if you are going to talk like that.”
“Beg pardon,” said the Captain shortly. “No, of course they don’t go.”
“I am sure I have few enough enjoyments without being made to suffer because you are to lose one of yours.”