His face—that of a man whom a sufficiency, but not an overplus, of food and wine and tobacco had put into just accord with the World about him—expressed little but bewilderment. "Heard at dinner!" he echoed. "Who on earth told her?"
"Lady Wargrave. She had had a letter from America."
He threw a look at that resplendent lady, whose high but not unmusical voice was riding the stream of talk. Her beautiful face and form, her graceful vivacity, and the perfection of her attire were such as naturally to have attracted round her magnet-wise the male filings of after-dinner re-assembly. Grafton himself, casting an unattached but attachable eye round him on entering the room, would have made his way instinctively to the group in which she was sitting.
"Damn the woman!" he said vindictively.
Caroline took hold of the lapels of his coat and kissed him, in defiance of company manners. "Hush, darling! The Bishop!" she said.
Throughout the short hour that followed he was vivacious and subdued by turns. He had no more than a few words alone with his hostess. "Poor little B!" she said commiseratingly.
"Yes, poor little B!" he echoed. "Are you sure it's that fellow?"
"Oh, yes, she said so, when I asked her. I didn't tell her why I had asked. You can talk to her about it if you like."
"Oh, good Lord, no!" he said. "I don't want to hear the fellow's name again. What has happened to him is nothing to me, if we've got rid of him. Of course I'm glad of it. It shows I was right about him. Now I shall get my little girl back again."
It was the sort of speech that Caroline had vaguely feared. Ella Carruthers said, with a smile: "You can't expect to keep her long, you know. But I'm glad this is at an end, as you so much disliked it."