“Colin, what do you mean by being in time for dinner?” he said. “Most irregular.”
“It’s I, father,” said Raymond.
“Oh, Raymond, is it?” said Lord Yardley. “I didn’t know you were here. Glad to see you.”
The words were sufficiently cordial, but the tone was very unlike that in which he had supposed himself to be addressing Colin. That was not lost on Raymond; for envy, the most elementary of all human passions, is also highly sensitive.
“You came from Cambridge?” asked his father, when they had sat down, in the same tone of studious politeness. “The term’s over, I suppose.”
“Yes, a week ago,” said Raymond. As he spoke he made some awkward movement in the unfolding of his napkin, and upset a glass which crashed on to the floor. Lord Yardley found himself thinking, “Clumsy brute!”
“Of course; Colin’s been here a week now,” he said, and Raymond did not miss that. Then Philip Yardley, considering that he had given his son an adequate welcome, said no more.
These family dinners were not, especially in Colin’s absence and in Raymond’s presence, very talkative affairs. Old Lady Yardley seldom spoke at all, but sat watching first one face and then another, as if with secret conjectures. Ronald Stanier paid little attention to anything except to his plate and his glass, and it was usually left to Violet and Lady Hester to carry on such conversation as there was. But even they required the stimulus of Colin, and to-night the subdued blink of spoons on silver-gilt soup-plates reigned uninterrupted. These had just ceased when Colin appeared, like a lamp brought into a dusky room.
“Sorry, father,” he said. “I’m late, you know. Where’s my place? Oh, between Aunt Hester and Violet. Ripping.”
“Urgent private affairs, Colin?” asked his father.