Small Rahnee and her ayah were picturesquely grouped upon a bright square of Persian carpet on the lawn. A macaw and two tame parrots gave a local, or eastern, colour to the scene as they screeched from their perches among the garden shrubs. Within one of the drawing-room windows—bay windows opening to the ground—reposed Linda. Her dress was of embroidered Indian muslin, not absolutely innocent of darns, perhaps, for the Doctor retained so much of old bachelor habit as to be his own housekeeper, and poor Linda must practise many a humiliating economy in her lot of femme incomprise. Bangles, similar to Rahnee’s, concealed the outline of the lady’s thin wrists. Her black hair, worn in a single coil, revealed sharply the outline of her head, Linda’s one incontestably good point. The cunningly arranged shadow of a rose-coloured window awning, if it did not hide, at least threw possible defects of complexion, suspicions of coming crow’s-feet, into uncertainty.
Linda Thorne was not a pretty woman. Lord Rex, his eyes still dazzled by Dinah’s wild rose face, felt more than usually cognisant of the fact. And still, with Rahnee and the turbaned ayah, with the macaws and parrots, the embroidered Indian dress, the Indian-looking bungalow, Linda ‘composed’ well. She formed the central figure of a Benjamin Constant picture, right pleasant to behold.
A hum of animated voices was in the air. Three or four young and pretty girls were distributed, spots of agreeable colour, about Linda’s sober-hued drawing-room. The prettiest of them all presided over a miniature tea-table drawn close beside the hostess at the open window. And the burthen of everybody’s talk, the clashing point of everybody’s opinions, was next Wednesday’s yachting-party.
‘We are to start at seven. Mamma heard it from Captain Ozanne himself.’
‘At midnight of Tuesday. The Princess will be away twenty-four hours.’
‘A week, at least, Rosie! And Madame Corbie is to be chaperon.’
‘I heard—Cassandra Tighe.’
‘There are to be no chaperons worth speaking of, for of course—don’t be offended, Linda—we cannot look upon you as one, so——’
‘So you are quite wrong, all of you,’ exclaimed Lord Rex, his head peeping up suddenly across Linda Thorne’s shoulder. ‘Miss Verschoyle, will you give me a cup of tea if I promise to set you right in a few of your guesses? A cup of tea, and your protection, for I am certain to be well attacked.’
‘This stimulates our curiosity to the proper point,’ the young lady answered, with a doubtful smile, but making place for Lord Rex at her side. ‘At the same time, it is an admission you have been doing something rather less wise than usual. Do you take six or seven lumps of sugar in your tea, Lord Rex? I never remember the precise number.’