It was a bad hour that she went through as she summed things up, and she came out of it startled at the knowledge that she, even she, was required to pay for her mistakes to the uttermost cent.
Well, she would pay and pay smiling. She would prove to Franklin that he was right when he said that she had courage.
Dinner was a rather pompous, long drawn out affair, watched, as usual, by several of Romney's rosy-cheeked men, a beautiful Gainsborough woman, and a Reynolds' legal luminary, cynical beneath a heavy wig. Conversation was conducted, rather than allowed to run easily, through the superfluous courses. The butler, with the air of a bishop, held an aloof place in the background and silent-footed men-servants hovered like hawks over the shoulders of the diners.
To Mr. Vanderdyke dinner was an institution, the land-mark in his vacant days. He trained for it with assiduous care and self-restraint, enjoyed it with his characteristic halfheartedness and took his punishment and his tabloids as a matter of course. To Mrs. Vanderdyke it was a severe temptation which, for the most part, she resisted with great pluck. The smallest increase of weight meant hours of treatment. Aunt Honoria just ate and let it go at that and so did Franklin, whose appetite was the envy and wonder of many of his less healthy friends. Beatrix pecked a little and said a little but smiled at everybody. She was keeping up the bluff until her cards were called.
How different and how wonderful it would all have been if instead of acting parts she and Franklin were playing them in reality!
After the ladies had left Franklin smoked a cigarette with Mr. Vanderdyke and did his best to show interest in his host's rather petulant criticisms of the ways and methods of the Government. He was very glad to follow him into the drawing-room in whose stiff immensity the ladies were almost lost.
He went straight up to Mrs. Vanderdyke, who was leaning on a Tudor mantelpiece, torn from Little Claverings in Essex. She always stood for twenty minutes after dinner. It was part of her régime. "I'm very keen to hear what there is to be told, Mrs. Vanderdyke," he said. "May we get to it now?"
"Isn't it a little early yet?" Mrs. Vanderdyke turned to Aunt Honoria, who was talking to Beatrix. The energy of this tall, tanned man was a little disconcerting. "Will you——"
"I have everything here," said Aunt Honoria, "and I agree with Pelham that there is no time like the present. I have given orders that we are on no account to be disturbed. You will sit down, won't you?"
Mrs. Vanderdyke did so, having glanced at the clock. Mr. Vanderdyke lay back in a low chair with the fingers of his long, thin hands together. He would far rather have been in the hands of a dentist than in that room at that time. Franklin sat bolt upright next to Beatrix, who had her metaphorical bomb all ready to throw into the middle of the group. Only to these two did the underlying drama of this curious meeting appeal fully.