"I thought you were enjoying yourself," said the other, "when you refused to go to the concert, for which, as you remember, only this afternoon you were wishing for an invitation. Afterward, also, I thought you were enjoying yourself."
"Oh, for God's sake don't try to be sly!" exclaimed Harry. "I wish I was a better hand at telling a story. But all the same I think it didn't bore Miss Aylwin. After all, the Luck is a very curious thing," he added.
"You are going to Oxted for the Sunday, are you not?" asked Geoffrey.
"Yes; the Grimstones have the flue in the house, bless them! And you go home, don't you? Oh, I never saw such wonderful eyes in my life!" he cried.
"You are alluding to mine, apparently?" said Geoffrey.
"Yes, of course I am. Deep violet by candlelight, and soft somehow like velvet."
"Very handsome of you. I'll look to-night when I go to bed. My hair, too, soft and fluffy, and the colour of the sun shining through a mist."
Harry laughed.
"The habit of being funny is growing on you, Geoff," he said. "Take it in time, old chap, and see some good man about it. Oh! it's rot going to bed now; let's come to the club; it's only just down Park Lane. I'm not feeling like bed just yet."
Meantime, at the house they had just left, Evie had gone up to bed, leaving Lady Oxted to do what she called "write two notes," a simple diplomatic method of stating that she did not herself mean to come upstairs immediately. These written, she announced, she would come to talk for five minutes, and they would take, perhaps, a quarter of an hour to write. In other words, as soon as Evie had gone, she went downstairs to seek her husband in his room, where she would be sure to find him sitting by a green reading lamp in mild exasperation at anything which the Government might happen to have done with regard either to a kindly old President of a South African republic or the second standard for board schools.