“And you have brought fresh news and good, I hope, Lady Grote?” asked Sir Hermann, who was ignorant of Mr. Boyton’s pursuit of sanity. “What was the report from France this morning?”
Aline took his arm in hers.
“Now, Hermann,” she said, “we’ve settled to leave the war alone and pretend there’s nothing going on. Won’t that be nice? Look, Helen, I told you we had made an Italian hall. Does it not look deliciously cool on this hot day?”
“Cool, yes: cooling room,” said Boyton below his breath. The powerful resemblance to a Turkish bath could scarcely be missed.
Helen looked round, was stunned, and recovered.
“How perfectly gorgeous, dear Aline,” she said. “Perfectly gorgeous! I never saw anything so magnificent.”
This was quite true, it also convinced, and as it was no good getting anyone to sit down on the cunning hot-water pipes, since the central heating was not on, they went on past the cunning lift and through the most velvety drawing-room on to the lawn, where in a tent that flew a flag emblazoned with the Gurtner arms lately discovered by the Heralds’ College, tea was waiting.
There was a good deal of admiration that must be expended over the tidiness with which Freddy ate his bread and jam, and the neatness with which Bertie tucked his napkin in, and the propriety with which Jackie said his grace, but anyhow these were subjects right away from the war-zone. Gradually, thanks to the unconscious youth of the children, and the mellow stability of the house, the three hundred years old lawn, the ordered and secure serenity of trees and stretch of sun-hazed pastures, something of the peaceful outlook made feint of returning, and Mr. Boyton felt that the treatment suited the British citizen of whom he was in charge....
“And you will shoot with me to-morrow?” asked Sir Hermann suddenly, not knowing that sport as well as war was abhorrent to his guest’s mind. “I can show you some good sport among my turnips.”
For a moment Aline forgot her Englishness and spoke in German.