Here the butler murmurs something to her in a discreet tone.
‘Oh, mushrooms! Good gracious, then why don’t they try to look like them!’
‘Have you any brothers?’ asks Miss Forbes, turning to Susan.
‘Don’t answer,’ says Captain Lennox. ‘She’s always asking after one’s brothers. Tell me, instead, how many sisters you have. Much more interesting. I love people’s sisters.’
‘I’m George’s sister,’ says Lady Forster, glancing at him thoughtfully.
‘And my wife!’ says Sir William, with such an over-assumption of marital authority that they all laugh, and his wife throws a pellet of bread at him.
Susan grows thoughtful, filled with a slight amazement. She had been nervous, almost distressed, at the idea of having to lunch at the Park. Its habitués, she told herself, would be very grand folk, and clever, and learned, and would talk very far above her little countrified head. And now how is it? Why, after all, they are more like Dom in his queerest moods than anything else.
‘What shall we do after luncheon?’ says Lady Forster. ‘I am willing to chaperon anybody.’ She glances at Lady Muriel, and Susan intercepts the glance.
Is it Lady Muriel and Mr. Crosby she is thinking of chaperoning?
‘Oh, I like your idea of supervision,’ says the Guardsman who has come in late, and who is called Lord Jack by everybody, only because, as Susan discovers afterwards, his name is Jack Lord. This, naturally, is inevitable. ‘You once undertook to chaperon me, and let me in for about the most risqué situation of my life. I came out of it barely alive, and very nearly maimed.’