That afternoon their guests began to arrive for the week-end party. It was the first they had given, and Amelie somehow felt a little nervous, for it was her debut as hostess. Lord Bolton was coming, and, in a way, it seemed to her hardly decent that she should be receiving him in this house. She had met him once or twice before, and was vaguely terrified at him. Sybil Massington was coming too, with Charlie, to whom she was to be married in July. Ginger was accompanying his father; other friends of Bertie's raised their numbers to a dozen, and both her own parents, with Reggie Armstrong as gentleman-in-waiting to Mrs. Palmer, were to make a sort of family party. This consciousness that she was on trial made her the least bit in the world self-conscious, and deep down in her mind, tucked away in its darkest corner, but still there, was a sort of haunting anxiety about her mother. Again and again she tried to picture to herself Mrs. Palmer and Gallio engaged in friendly desultory conversation, but as often she abandoned this projected situation as unthinkable. She even hoped—hoped in a whisper, that is to say—that for some reason her mother would be prevented from coming. That whisper she stifled as often as it sounded, thoroughly ashamed of it; but it was there.
But Providence declined to have any special dealings on this point, and Mrs. Palmer's entry into the house was clearly audible to her as she sat in the garden with those of her guests who had arrived. Gallio was already there, his thin but fresh-coloured face and flossy white hair, his general air of great distinction and complete imperturtability, seeming admirably suited to the dignified stability of the gray house and the spaciousness of the ancestral lawns. He had been most affectionate and gentle to her, had called her 'his dear daughter,' had kissed her hand with a courtly grace, and made her feel intensely ill at ease. Then came the sound of screamings from the house, and if the simile of a substantial butterfly with a shrill voice discharged from a catapult conveys anything to the reader, it was in such manner that Mrs. Palmer came through the open French windows of the drawing-room, and with outstretched arms swooped swiftly across the lawn to Amelie.
'My dearest, sweetest angel child,' she cried—screams of emotion mingled with kissing—' why, if I haven't been just dreaming day and night of seeing you again!'—more screams—' Why, you look so well; you look just too lovely for words. I've been just crazy to see you!'
Lord Bolton had in the previous year firmly declined the honour of Mrs. Palmer's acquaintance, saying he did not wish to be deaf for the remainder of a misspent life; and Amelie introduced her to him.
'Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Lord Bolton,' she said; 'and to have the pleasure of meeting you here makes it just too complete.'
Gallio shook hands.
'I have looked forward to this,' he said with his best paternal air. 'Bertie, dear Amelie, you, and my unworthy self—the family group in the family frame.' And his eye wandered over the great gray façade of the house.
'Well, I think that's too beautifully put,' said Mrs. Palmer; 'that's a real poetical thought. Lewis,' she called to her husband, 'Lord Bolton's been too poetical for words. Well, I'm sure!'
Gallio's thin lips tightened a little.
'How are you, Mr. Palmer?' he said. 'I am most fortunate to have been able to come down to-day. I was afraid I should not be able to, but when my dear daughter said you were both coming, I could not let anything stand in the way.'