Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet refined bonhommie that was with her the substitute for tact.
“Why shouldn’t you come early, my dear child?” she said, looking approvingly at Francie’s embarrassed countenance. “I’ll tell Pamela you are here. Evelyn, don’t you know Miss Fitzpatrick?”
Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself languidly from her chair, and shook hands with the new-comer, as Lady Dysart strode from the room with her customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for nearly a minute after the door closed; but at length Miss Hope-Drummond braced herself to the exertion of being agreeable.
“Very hot day, isn’t it?” looking at Francie’s flushed cheeks.
“It is indeed, roasting! I was nearly melting with the heat on the jaunting-car coming over,” replied Francie, with a desire to be as responsive as possible, “but it’s lovely and cool in here.”
She looked at Miss Hope-Drummond’s spotless white gown, and wished she had not put on her Sunday terra-cotta.
“Oh, is it?”
Silence; during which Francie heard the wheels of her car grinding away down the avenue, and wished that she were on it.
“Have you been out on the lake much lately, Miss Hope-Drummond?”
Francie’s wish was merely the laudable one of trying to keep the heavy ball of conversation rolling, but the question awoke a slumbering worm of discontent in her companion’s well-ordered breast. Christopher was even now loosing from his moorings at the end of the park, without having so much as mentioned that he was going out; and Captain Cursiter, her own compatriot, attached—almost linked—to her by the bonds of mutual acquaintances, and her thorough knowledge of the Lincolnshire Cursiters, had not risen to the fly that she had only yesterday thrown over him on the subject of the steam-launch.