‘No—no indeed. But to take you away from your guests—’
‘My guests will live without me for half an hour, I have no doubt.’ His tone is quite its old joyous self again. ‘And I promised your aunt to see that you got safely back to her, and, as the children say, “a promise is a promise.” Here are your begonias. Shall I fasten them in for you?’
He arranges them under her pretty chin, she holding up her head to let him do it, and then they go back to the music-room, where Sir William catches him and carries him off for something or other. Susan, sinking into a chair, finds Josephine Prior almost immediately beside her.
‘Those pretty begonias!’ says she. ‘How they suit you, though hardly your frock! Of course’—with elephantine archness—‘I need not ask who gave them to you. Mr. Crosby is always showering little favours on his women friends. Those roses to Lady Muriel’—Susan holds her breath a moment—‘and these begonias to you, and opera-tickets to others, and last night such a delicious box of marron glaces to me.’ She forgets to add that he gave a similar box to each of his lady guests, having run up to Dublin in the morning and brought them back with him from Mitchell’s.
‘I declare the sun is coming out at last,’ says Lady Forster. ‘It is going to be a glorious evening. What a swindle! We have been quite done out of our day. I do call that maddening. Never mind, we must make up for it to-night. We will have—what shall we have, Dolly?’—to Miss Forbes. ‘A pillow scuffle? Yes; that will be the very thing. And, Susan, you shall stay and sleep and help us. And we’ll get the boys up. They would be splendid at it, and give even us points, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I have promised Miss Barry,’ says Crosby, in a distinct tone, ‘to take Susan home this evening at six, and I’m afraid it is rather after that now. Will you go and put on your hat, Susan?’
END OF VOL. II.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
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