“Don’t forget to give my messages,” she called after him. “Cards at Villa Rose this evening. Don’t be later than seven.”
He might still be muttering “Lavender” as he went on his way; but there was just one colour, at that moment, of which Mr. Albert Andrews was positive, and that colour was gray. All the world was gray, drab-gray.
Rosamond ran into the house to examine Dom Paradis’s cake, but, while she poked a sprig from the broom into its dough, she was still pondering Mr. Andrews’s odd behaviour.
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed as she found to be satisfactory what the end of the bent straw revealed. “Rosamond, dear, do you suppose that dubby thing was making love to you? Is that what will happen to you, Rosamond, now that you have put off the last black ribbon? Haven’t you seen it coming? Proposals from the stupid men and gossip from the catty women, till they make you marry somebody—somebody old! Rosamond, dear, you simply must go in search of that irredeemably bourgeois lover this afternoon. And you have no time to lose.”
However, she refused to be downcast. There would still be six hours of sun in this day—even if His Friggets came back to-morrow.
She was so busy in the kitchen and pantry that she did not hear one o’clock ring from the tower bell at twenty minutes past the hour. The toll-man, being full of years and midday dinner, had fallen asleep immediately after tucking away his meal. On awaking he decided, very sensibly, to ignore the occurrence, and to ring the hour as usual, no matter what the time might be.
CHAPTER IX
Dom Paradis’s cake, as modified by Rosamond of Roseborough and twentieth century dietetic caution, came from the oven a golden brown and snowy white success. Its odour was unique and delectable. Its weight was light as a puff. Rosamond surveyed it with a pride almost equal to that which must have extended the cheeks and bosom of its sybaritic inventor, Lallia y Poptu de Sillihofo Sanza, Countess of Mountjoye, when she first saw the glory she had evolved to deck the inner circles of her beloved. She sniffed it in long-drawn delight.
“Mum-mum—ooh-h! No wonder he ate himself to death for love of you, Contessa! I wonder if Dom Jack, the Prince of Roseborough, is fat?”