‘Now, it’s a promise, Mrs. Prior, isn’t it? You’—here he glances deliberately at Josephine—‘you will come and look round my place soon, won’t you? I’m thinking of making up a little house-party in September or August, and I hope you and Miss Prior will leave a week open for me.’ He throws a look over his shoulder. ‘You too, Wyndham?’
‘Thank you,’ says Paul absently.
‘What a charming idea!’ cries Josephine ecstatically. Here she decides upon clapping her hands, and she does it in her perfectly well-bred way. The result is deadly. ‘To stay with a bachelor! Mamma, you will consent?’
Mamma consents. Josephine, again leaning towards Crosby, says something delightful to him. It has seemed to her since Crosby’s coming that to have two strings to your bow is a very desirable thing. Paul is well enough, and in the end, of course, she will marry him, though at times she has thought that he——But, of course, that is nonsense. He would be afraid to marry anyone else—afraid of his uncle. What a pity he is not Mr. Crosby, or Mr. Crosby Paul! Well, one can’t have everything one’s own way, after all, and there is the title. Lady Shangarry—Mrs. Crosby. Yes; the title counts. But really Paul is so very dull, and Mr. Crosby, though he has no title, so infinitely better off than Paul will ever be, and the Crosbys are an old family, dating back to—goodness knows when! Still, a title!
Finally she gets back to the title, and stays there.
‘But yes, really, dear Paul,’ Mrs. Prior is saying, ‘I think that housekeeper of yours, or caretaker, or whatever she is, takes too much upon her. I tried to explain to her I was your aunt, and, indeed, she has seen me several times, but I could not shake her determination to let no one in. Anyone might be excused for imagining that she was concealing something.’
‘Garden-party for her own friends, no doubt,’ says Crosby. He has cast a half-amused, half-inquiring glance at Wyndham; but the latter’s face is impassive.
‘I think it a little serious,’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘Young men, as a rule, are always imposed upon by women of her class—caretakers, of course, I mean,’ with a careful glance at the innocent Josephine. ‘Landladies and that. Do you think, dear Paul, that she is quite honest?’
‘Quite, I think.’
‘Then why this extraordinary step on her part—this locking out your very nearest and’—with an open glance at Josephine—‘dearest? No, no, George,’ to Crosby, ‘you really must not jest on this subject. I feel it is quite important where Paul is concerned. You really know of no reason, Paul, why she should have forbidden us an entrance?’