Here Trevalyon's servant entering, handed his master's card to Delrose; on the back of which he read: "Are you prepared to own up as to the part you played in the Clarmont escapade? if not, I shall clear myself."
"Tell your master I am neither a babe nor suckling," he answered defiantly, his brow black with hate and rage as he tore the card to pieces, throwing it towards the man.
There being a sort of free-masonry between Madame and Delrose, the movements of each being rarely unobserved by the other, she was about to play into his hands by signalling her sisterhood to rise from the table, when Sir Lionel Trevalyon was announced, who, hastily coming to her side, taking her hand in salutation, said:
"You will kindly give me a few moments, Mrs. Haughton; oblige me, please, by keeping your seat."
Madame was recklessly abandon, and Sir Lionel had asked her with his mesmeric eyes, or she would not have disobeyed the pressure of the Delrose boot upon her fours in scarlet satin, (for she did not pine for the whiteness of the lily in boots or hose), "It is too tame, not chic," she would laugh, and say adding, "a fig for its purity."
"Welcome, thrice welcome, Trevalyon, my dear fellow," cried the Colonel warmly. "Here, Winter," to the butler "attend to the comfort of Sir Lionel Trevalyon'"
"I thank you, Haughton, you are always kind, but I have dined."
There was another pressure of the Delrose boot which, this time, had the desired effect, emphasised as it was by a meaning look.
Lionel, with one hand on the back of Colonel Haughton's chair, smiled his greetings, and as his eyes rested for a moment on Vaura, knowing her intensely emotional nature, and seeing her quickened heart beats, her cheek paling, her lips scarlet by contrast, her large eyes full of sympathy, he was glad to change the scene to the great drawing rooms. On Madame answering the Delrose signal by rising from the table, saying, "Say your say in the greater comforts of the drawing-rooms, Sir Lionel, as you have dined; come away, the gentlemen will not linger to-night; here, give me your arm and I shall be well taken care of between two such gallants as Lord Rivers and yourself."
"As you will, fair Madame, and you I know will not say me nay when I ask you to bid all your guests come, as I have a word to say to them of the 'hidden wife,' society gives me."