“No! Are you really?” she said. “I think that is unkind of you, Georgie. You might have told me you were coming.”
“But you said that the house wasn’t ready,” said he. “And she asked me.”
Lucia put on a bright smile.
“Well, you’re forgiven,” she said. “We’re all at sixes and sevens yet. And we’ve seen nothing of dearest Olga—or Mrs. Shuttleworth, I should say, for that’s on the bills. Of course we’ll drive you home, and you must come in for a chat, before Mrs. Shuttleworth gets home, and then no doubt she will be very tired and want to go to bed.”
Lucia as she spoke had been surveying the house with occasional little smiles and wagglings of her hand in vague directions.
“Ah, there’s Elsie Garroby-Ashton,” she said, “and who is that with her, Pepino? Lord Shrivenham, surely. So come back with me and have ’ickle talk, Georgie. Oh, there’s the Italian Ambassadress. Dearest Gioconda! Such a sweet. And look at the Royal box; what a gathering! That’s the Royal box, Georgie, away to the left—that large one—in the tier below. Too near the stage for my taste: so little illusion——”
Lucia suddenly rose and made a profound curtsey.
“I think she saw us, Pepino,” she said, “perhaps you had better bow. No, she’s looking somewhere else now: you did not bow quick enough. And what a party in dearest Aggie’s box. Who can that be? Oh yes, it’s Toby Limpsfield. We met him at Aggie’s, do you remember, on the first night we were up. So join us at the grand entrance, Georgie, and drive back with us. We shall be giving a lift to somebody else, I’ll be bound, but if you have your motor, it is so ill-natured not to pick up friends. I always do it: they will be calling us the ‘Lifts of London,’ as Marcia Whitby said.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Georgie. “I’m waiting for Olga, and she’s having a little party, I believe.”
“No! Is she really?” asked Lucia, with all the old Riseholme vivacity. “Who is coming?”