There she sat, this charming, unchaperoned young person, dining with three bachelors in the Temple with as much sangfroid as if it were a most conventional and everyday occurrence.
The truth was that, the first shock recovered, the fair guest was actually enjoying herself extremely. She was extraordinarily adaptable. For one thing, she liked the risqué, unusual situation—her two amusing, clever, mystified supporters on either hand, who were doing their utmost to take it all as a matter of course, and to be unusually agreeable and entertaining. And she liked looking across the table at her husband’s handsome, gloomy face, and remarked to herself that this was positively their first dinner-party, and that it should not be her fault if it did not go off well!
Laurence’s silence and gravity implied that it was all very wrong; but it was, nevertheless, delightful. She felt quite carried out of herself with excitement and high spirits, and more than once the idea flashed across her mind—
“Shall I tell—shall I tell? Oh, it would be worth anything to see their faces when they hear that I am Mrs. Wynne!”
But Mrs. Wynne was not very good at telling, as we know, and, without any exhausting effort of self-restraint, she was enabled to hold her peace.
CHAPTER XXV.
PLAIN SPEAKING.
All went merry as a marriage bell. The dinner was a success. There was no hitch; the laundress (with interludes devoted to the crack in the door) safely brought up course after course. Now they had ceased, and the company were discussing dessert, and many of the topics of last season—Henley, Ascot, Mrs. Pat Campbell, the rival charms of Hurlingham and Ranelagh.
“Wynne here never goes to these frivolous places,” said Treherne.
“I’m not a member, you see.”
“‘Can’t afford it,’ that’s his cry to all these delights. He can afford it well—a single man, no claims on his purse, and getting such fees.”