“Making love to her!” Deyes answered.
Lady Peggy laughed.
“If I believed you,” she declared, “I’d give up this rubber and go and lose myself amongst the palms with you. Come and cut in—you too, Wilhelmina.”
But Wilhelmina excused herself. She drove homewards with a soft smile upon her lips, and the dead weight lifted from her heart.
CHAPTER XV
THE ONLY WAY
It was a round table, too, at which Macheson dined that night, but with a different company. For they were all men who sat there, men with earnest faces and thoughtful eyes. The graces of evening dress and society talk they knew nothing of. They were the friends of Macheson’s college days, the men who had sworn amongst themselves that, however they might live, they would devote the greater part of their life to their fellow-creatures.
They were smoking pipes, and a great bowl of tobacco was on the table. Few of them took wine, but Macheson and Holderness were drinking whisky. Holderness, their senior, was usually the one who started their informal talk.