“I’ve danced with him. He was at the Hunt Ball this year.” She turned amiably to Rose. “Do you know him?”
Rose, startled from the vacancy of thought into which she had drifted in her complete inattention to a conversation that she considered futile, replied brusquely “No,” and there was a sudden silence.
Then Diana, with the super-evident tact of the kind-hearted, remarked rather lamely, “Oh, of course, you’ve been abroad, haven’t you? I forgot that.”
Ford rose, smiling gently after his wont, his mouth curving slightly, his narrow eyes opaque and sombre.
“I hear the carriage, Mother. I hope that’s Charlesbury.”
Diana said, “Oh, good,” in a placid way and Rose straightened herself in her chair, and from long habit, fluffed up a straight end of hair on her temple between her first and second fingers.
Lord Charlesbury was tall, with a kind, thin, sunburnt face, rather good-looking in spite of approaching baldness, and wearing an eyeglass to which Rose, inwardly, after her usual trenchant fashion, immediately applied the epithet of “la-di-dah.”
He greeted Diana Grierson-Amberly by her Christian name, and appeared to be on intimate terms with his hosts.
“How’s the boy, Laurence?”
“Going strong, thanks. He’s as happy as the day is long at Hurst, and they tell me he’s going to be a cricketer.”