"Dancing?" he said lightly: "Rather—Lady Ducies may I have this first waltz? No?—Oh! I say that's too bad. The first Lancers then? Good! Lou, may I have this dance?"
And the world went on just the same.
CHAPTER XI
AND THERE ARE SOCIAL DUTIES TO PERFORM
The first November fog.
The world had wagged on its matter-of-fact way for more than six months now, since that day in April when Philip de Mountford—under cover of lies told by Parker—had made his way into Lord Radclyffe's presence: more than five months since the favoured nephew had been so unceremoniously thrust out of his home.
Spring had yielded to summer, summer given way to autumn, and already winter was treading hard on autumn's heels. The autumn session had filled London with noise and bustle, with political dinner parties and monster receptions, with new plays at all the best theatres, and volumes of ephemeral literature.
And all that was—to-night—wrapped in a dense fog, the first of the season, quite a stranger, too, in London, for scientists had asserted positively that the era of the traditional "pea-souper" was over; the metropolis would know it no more.
Colonel Harris was in town with his sister, Lady Ryder, and Louisa, and swearing at London weather in true country fashion. He declared that fogs paralyzed his intellect that he became positively imbecile, not knowing how to fight his way in the folds of such a black pall. Taxicab drivers he mistrusted; in fact, he had all an old sportsman's hatred of mechanically propelled vehicles, whilst he flatly refused to bring valuable horses up to town, to catch their death of cold whilst waiting about in the fog.
So Luke had promised to pilot the party as far as the Danish Legation, where they were to dine to-night. This was the only condition under which Colonel Harris would consent to enter one of those confounded motors.