Rosie Verschoyle was a bright-complexioned, dimpled girl of nineteen, with an exactly proportioned waist (of society), an exactly correct profile, the exact mass of nut-brown hair that fashion requires descending to her brows, and a pair of large, nut-brown, somewhat spaniel-like eyes. Until Dinah’s advent Lord Rex thought Rosie the fairest among the beauties regnant, and was openly her slave at all the picnics and garden-parties going. Miss Verschoyle had not the air of encouraging these attentions. She seldom lost a chance of making Rex Basire’s vanity smart, and had been known to say that she positively disliked that plain, forward boy who managed to scare away really pleasant partners and monopolise one’s best dances. And still, throughout the whole island society, among Rosie’s more intimate girl-friends notably, there had been a growing suspicion for some time past that Miss Verschoyle would, one day, marry Lord Rex Basire.
‘I take as many lumps as Miss Verschoyle chooses to give me.’ He received the cup with mock humility from her plump, white, inexpressive hands. ‘The sweets and bitters as they come.’
‘Bitters—in tea!’ echoed Rosie, opening her brown eyes wide. ‘Steer clear of metaphors, Lord Rex. They really do not suit your style of eloquence.’
‘Rosie, Rosie! While you two children spar, the rest of us are dying of curiosity.’ The admonition was made in Linda’s smoothest voice. ‘Lord Rex, recollect your promise. You know, you are to set us all right. What are the plans for Wednesday? Why are we certain, when we have heard these plans, to attack you? Come here, and make confession.’
Lord Rex perched himself, obediently, on a stool near Mrs. Thorne’s feet. Then, sipping the tea sweetened for him by Rosie Verschoyle, with more trepidation of spirit, so he afterwards owned, than he ever felt before the fire of an enemy, he thus began his shrift:
‘We have made due inquiry from the harbour-master, and find the Princess must clear out as soon as the first English steamer is signalled. Will seven o’clock be too early for you all?’
A chorus of cheerfully acquiescent voices answered, ‘No.’
‘We have also invited Madame Corbie and the Archdeacon. It seems, for an expedition of the kind, one ought to have a real substantial chaperon or two. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorne, but——’
‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ cried Linda, with good humour, willing, like most of her sex, to condone the accusation of over-youth.
‘And Madame Corbie accepts, conditionally. I have been paying my court to aged ladies half the morning! So, unconditionally, does Miss Tighe. As regards chaperonage, one may say really—really——’ hesitated Lord Rex, feeling in his guilty soul how red he grew, ‘one may say, Mrs. Thorne, that, in the matter of chaperons, there will be an embarrassment of riches.’