"Who's going to open these?"
Already Mr. Brown had whisked a skirt of his tunic under his arm and was slipping his sapper's knife from its swivel. "Stand from under!" sang out the little second lieutenant as pop! went a cork. "Right! I'll fill 'em, Mrs. C. I'm the next starter for the matrimonial stakes, after the giddy bridegroom. Out o' the way, Ross! Don't take up the earth.... Invited out to supper, and staying to wedding-breakfast, eh?... Here's yours, Miss Olwen; a bridesmaid, are you?... No, you don't, Ellerton; I'm booked for best man.... I'm going to have one from everybody.... After you've finished with my feet, Ross——"
Captain Ross, glaring above his glass at the group about that tall and resplendent bridal pair, found his bad temper of the day culminating in a very curious decision.
He was going to leave directly he'd finished this glass of champagne in which they toasted the young Awdases. And he was going to take with him, Olwen Howel-Jones. He was going to see her home. He was; not that gibbering idiot Brown, who was engaged anyway, nor that hopeless ass Ellerton, that Naval outfitter's dummy; no fear. Most certainly not. As for that fellow Jack, what the Hades did he mean by looking as if he were the only man on God's earth whose wedding-night it had ever been or ever could be? Was Jack Awdas the first young fool who'd ever managed to get himself marked down and married by a girl?... The whole party seemed to be one confounded whirl of tomfoolery.... Well, he, Ross, was leaving, and taking that chit home. (It was high time.) Drive her all the way, too; because he'd got something to say to her. Straight away he'd say to her, "Now, see here, damn it, there's going to be no more of this, there's been enough of it, and I won't have it."
Just that was what he intended to say, and——
At this instant the Master of the House, in the treble one of his voices, called, "I say, Captain Ross, please—they're asking for you."
The telephone-bell had rung a moment before, and Keith had run out of the room to answer it.
The telephone was just outside; Captain Ross went to it....
In a minute or so he returned. He was seen to draw his hostess aside, to murmur something to her. Mrs. Cartwright nodded quickly. Then he went up for the second time that evening to catch hold, with his one remaining hand, of the arm of Jack Awdas. The young flying officer gave a jerk of his fair head; a whisper to Golden, another to his hostess.... Before the rest of the group had realized that they were going, those two, Ross and Awdas, were out of the flat, down the one flight of steps and out into the clear moonlight above Westminster.
Then, composedly and carelessly, Mrs. Cartwright slipped her arm through Golden's, and turned to her other guests.